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BEGINNING LIFE. 



A SERIES OF SERMONS TO THE YOUNG. 



BY / 

THE REV. CHARLES WOOD, D. D. 



■■ >' V 



PHILADELPHIA : 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 

AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK, 

No. 1334 CHESTNUT STREET. 



V 







The Library 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



COPYRIGHT, 1889, BY 

THE TRUSTEES OF THE 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 
AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK. 



ALL BIGHTS RESERVED. 



Westcott & Thomson, 
Stereotypers and Electrotypers, Philada. 



DEDICATED 

TO THE 

YOUNG PEOPLE'S SOCIETY 

OF 

CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR 

OF THE 

FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, 

Germantown, Philadelphia, 

AND TO ALL THE YOUNG PEOPLE OF THAT CHURCH 
AND CONGREGATION. 



CONTENTS. 



i. 

PAGE 

Is Life a Career, or a Mission? 7 



II. 
Youth 23 

III. 
Friendships 33 

IV. 
What shall we Bead? 49 

V. 
The Forming of Habits 65 

VI. 
Perpetual Youth 83 

VII. 

Temptation 97 

5 



6 CONTENTS. 

VIII. 

PAOH 

Making a Home 113 

IX. 
Strength 129 

X. 
Success 145 



I. 

IS LIFE A CAREER, OR A MISSION? 



BEGINNING LIFE. 



I. 

IS LIFE A CAREER, OR A MISSION? 

"I must work the works of Him that sent me, while it is 
day." — John ix. 4. 

THE life of Jesus Christ was pervaded with a 
feeling of responsibility. He spoke of himself 
as having come to this earth on a most momentous 
mission, and his thoughts were perpetually con- 
centrated upon the accomplishment of it. They 
who have entered most fully into the meaning of 
his life have had some such feeling about them- 
selves. His mission was infinitely more glorious 
than theirs, or than that of any human being, 
but all his brethren, as he calls us, must have, 
like him, a God-given work to do. This, it must 
be confessed, is a somewhat serious, not to say som- 
bre, view to take of life ; it is a view that theoret- 
ically very many, and practically very many more, 
openly or tacitly refuse to take. Life, as they 
look at it, is a career — something to be played 
like a game; and he who wins, though he may 
have broken all the rules, is to have the prize. 

9 



10 BEGINNING LIFE. 

This is the popular view that is spreading like a 
contagion, and no land is more exposed than our 
own. We have no hereditary rulers ; our ancestors 
preserved us from ever waiting " as sycophants in 
the court of kings ;" but we satisfy the servile 
part of our natures by the abject homage we pay 
success. The smart man, the man who gets on, 
who does what he sets out to do in whatever way, 
is getting to be our national hero. Hereditary 
position and wealth count for less here than in 
England, but the self-made man, the man who 
lifts himself above his fellows and wrings a fort- 
une from the hands of reluctant Fate, is the one 
before whom Liberty herself would uncap if her 
helmet were not riveted to her beautiful head. 

I shall make no effort at this time to overturn 
this theory by weight of argument ; I shall rather 
attempt to displace it by causing some of the fig- 
ures most prominent in the English-speaking world 
to pass before you, and as you see that they have 
each broken away from or outgrown the concep- 
tion of life as a career, you may come to see as 
they saw that life is a mission. I am encouraged 
in this attempt by the fact that this audience is so 
largely made up of the young, for, as the rabbis 
say, " to teach wisdom to the old is to write it in 
water; to teach it to the young is to grave it on 
stone." 

Let me hold before you, first, as a sort of back- 
ground for my dissolving-views, the form of one 



IS LIFE A C A BEER, OB A MISSION? 11 

who never rose above the conception of life as a 
career, and who would have been, if that definition 
were correct, a most brilliant success. Eleven years 
ago, in the vestibule of the English House of Com- 
mons, I saw a man of sphinx-like face gazing, 
with a score or more dignified companions, at a 
statue of some famous statesman that had just 
been put in place. This man at whom we were 
looking was at that time on the crest of the wave ; 
a man of fashion, a writer of sensational melodra- 
matic novels, a member of Parliament hissed back 
into his seat after his first speech, the leader of his 
party, the prime minister of the realm, an earl, and 
is still, a decade after his death, a popular idol ; and, 
withal, a Hebrew. No such phenomenon had ever 
before appeared in English history. He was a 
nimble matador, fastening his darts in the necks 
of his enraged adversaries as they rushed upon him 
while he stepped aside with a light laugh, half at 
them and half at himself. This winner of all the 
honors must have died a disappointed man, for it is 
doing him no injustice, if one may judge from all that 
he ever said or did, to say that he lived for power 
and thought the man either a fool or a hypocrite who 
professed any less earthly motive ; and power was 
the one thing that he lost before his death. He was 
no longer prime minister : his hated rival had the 
rank that was heaven to him. Life as a career even 
the marvelous Hebrew would probably have pro- 
nounced a failure. 



12 BEGINNING LIFE. 

Compare this life with that of another English 
earl covering almost the same decades. No high of- 
fice was his, but he was an enthusiast in doing good. 
There was scarcely a society, philanthropic or Chris- 
tian, in all London that could not count on his sup- 
port. All the downtrodden and oppressed felt that 
he was their friend. Multitudes are living happier, 
nobler lives to-day because of Shaftesbury. Where 
is there one nobly inspired by the brilliant statesman, 
the unrivaled organizer of dramatic international 
councils ? 

Standing only a few feet away from the Hebrew 
earl that afternoon in the vestibule of the House of 
Commons was a man of a very different type. He 
was then supposed to be suffering from the defeat 
that had carried himself and his party out of power, 
but his influence had never been greater, and the 
real work of his life was being carried on as quietly 
and as successfully as if those adverse votes had never 
been cast. Even as a boy he was so remarkable, 
both intellectually and morally, that a young Eaton 
lad now famous as the late dean of the Abbey was 
taken to see him as a reward for well-doing. He 
grew steadily upon the world till by almost com- 
mon consent among his kin beyond the sea he is 
known as the greatest of living Englishmen. He 
too, like the Hebrew earl, has held his honors lightly, 
though not for the same reasons. He has gone from 
cabinet meetings where the destiny of a continent 
was decided, to pray with some dying laborer on his 



IS LIFE A CAREER, OR A MISSION? 13 

estate. He has probably accepted gladly the great 
offices to which he has been called, but he has never 
forgotten that his real mission here, like that of 
every other true man, is to work the works of Him 
that sent him. The success of both these lives is 
beyond us, but not the eagerness for it of the one 
or the comparative indifference to it of the other. 
The fidelity to a high ideal that makes one of these 
lives so admirable is not beyond the reach of the 
very humblest. 

Not unworthy to be mentioned in the same breath 
with the great statesman and the Christian apologist 
is the gray-haired, silver-tongued orator of the So- 
ciety of Friends. Perhaps he was the truest and 
most hopeful friend we had in England during our 
war. He looked across the sea in the dark hour 
when Northern armies were thrown back broken 
and discouraged, and through the smoke of the con- 
flict he saw the glowing vision of "one vast confede- 
ration stretching in an unbroken line from the frozen 
North to the glowing South and from the wild bil- 
lows of the Atlantic westward to the calmer waters of 
the Pacific main ; and I see," said he, " one people and 
one language and one law and one faith over all that 
wide continent, the home of freedom and the refuge 
of the oppressed of every land and of every clime." 
On the morning of the first day of each week he 
takes his place with a little company in sombre garb 
whose worship of God is mostly of the silent sort, 
but his, at least, is so sincere that more than once he 



14 BEGINNING LIFE. 

has followed his convictions concerning war and 
peace, out of office into obscurity as great as is possi- 
ble for such a man. It has been altogether impos- 
sible for him to accept any position, however honor- 
able, that would hinder his doing as he understands 
it "the works of Him that sent him." 

" If I could choose my lot in life," said one idler 
to another, " I would be an English duke." The 
possibilities open to one born in that position are 
somewhat dazzling. Apparently, such a one has 
only to close his fingers upon the prizes that fall un- 
sought into his palms. Like one of our rich men's 
sons, who has no need to do anything if he has no 
wish to be anything but a rich man's son, he has no 
need to exert himself if he does not wish to be any- 
thing but a duke. But even men who have inherited 
a career so brilliant have not ignobly contented 
themselves with it, but have felt that they too were 
called to work the works of Him that sent them into 
the ducal palace. There is a duke allied by marriage 
to the English queen upon whom I ask you to look, 
not because of the splendor of his rank or of 
the glory reflected from the crown, but because his 
view of life is that of a responsible mission which 
it has been his purpose to accomplish in a way pleas- 
ing to his Master. No small portion of his life has 
been devoted to diligent study of nature and of law. 
No better exposition of the reign of Law has been 
given than his. Convinced of the unseen Presence 
everywhere, it has been his effort to show how 



IS LIFE A CAREER, OR A MISSION? 15 

" The whole round earth is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God." 

The qualities which make him most admirable, his 
fidelity, his devotion to duty and truth, are within 
the reach of the humblest mechanic and clerk. The 
virtues which shine so brightly to men's eyes when 
they are exhibited by those of exalted rank shine as 
brightly in God's eyes when set in the most lowly 
surroundings. The same " Well done !" is to be 
spoken at last to all good and faithful servants, 
whether they come from the hills or from the valleys 
of earth. 

It is openly asserted that Christianity has lost its 
grip on the thinking men of these modern times. 
An English poet who gives voice to many thoughts 
that are in the air depicts this age as one of transi- 
tion. He finds himself, he says, 

" Wandering between two worlds, 
One dead, the other powerless to be born." 

The leaders of thought are dumb; they have no 
fair visions to which to point ; they have no high 
calls to go in and possess the land of promise ly- 
ing within sight. 

" Achilles ponders in his tent ; 

The kings of modern thought are dumb : 
Silent they are, though not content, 

And wait to see the future come — 
Silent while years engrave the brow. 
Silent ! the best are silent now." 



16 BEGINNING LIFE. 

But I see an old man who has long swayed the 
destinies of England rising in his place in the House 
of Commons, and in the great hush that comes upon 
that assembly and the whole English-speaking world 
when he speaks, I hear him say, " I believe in God 
the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, 
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord," By 
his side stands the silver-tongued orator of England, 
and with him are the scientific duke and the poet-lau- 
reate and the most thoughtful of all the poets of our 
time, and they too repeat their creed : " We believe 
in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and 
earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord." 
Ah, no ! The best are not all silent now. 

Life may be a meaningless career, as it has been, 
and is, to vast multitudes ; it may be a most signifi- 
cant and exalted mission. It is very much what 
we make of it. It is told of a witty dean that, ar- 
riving somewhat prematurely one evening at a re- 
ception, he was the first to enter the great drawing- 
room hung on every side with mirrors, and, seeing 
his own form reflected everywhere, he rubbed his 
hands and said, " Ah ! a gathering of the clergy, I 
see !" So men come into life where there are great 
reflectors on every side. The avaricious man rubs 
his hands and says, " Ah ! a gathering of money- 
getters, I see !" The ambitious man rubs his hands 
and says, " Ah ! a gathering of place-hunters, I 
see I" The lotus-eater rubs his hands and says, 
" Ah ! a gathering of pleasure-seekers, I see !" and 



IS LIFE A CAREER, OR A MISSION? 17 

the cynic rubs his hands and says, " Ah ! a gather- 
ing of apes, I see, making faces at one another !" 
while the true-hearted man rubs his hands and says, 
" Ah ! a gathering of men, I see !" As Lowell says, 

" Be noble, and the nobleness that lies 
Sleeping in other men, but never dead, 
Will rise in majesty to meet thine own," 

Let life be for you a high and holy embassy, and 
you will find multitudes as eager as yourself to w r ork 
the works of Him that sent them. 

There are but two essentials for a truly successful 
life. The first of these is nobleness of ideal. Fol- 
low anything but the highest and best, and your 
work will be needlessly faulty. High above the 
fair city on the Arno, near the church of San Min- 
iato, stands Michael Angel o's statue of David. To 
the untrained eye it is one of his masterpieces, but 
artists tell us it is the least perfect of anything he 
has left us. The story is that Angelo in an unfort- 
unate moment accepted the partly-executed design 
of another, of course inferior, sculptor, and, though 
possessed of almost more than human skill, he was 
never able to overcome those faults that could only 
have been escaped by destroying utterly the imper- 
fect design. Accept any merely human model as 
your ideal of the perfect life, and you will never at- 
tain to that which w T as possible to you ; accept the 
perfect man Christ Jesus as the ideal toward which 
you wish to work and into which you wish your 

2 



18 BEGINNING LIFE. 

life to come, and nothing can prevent your success. 
You shall be satisfied at last, for you shall be trans- 
formed into that likeness. The work of each day 
will fit easily into the great purposes of your life ; 
you will have no desire to escape from your present 
lot into another more advantageous, but your desire 
will be to do what you have to do unto his glory. 
You will see how true it is, as Herbert says, 

" All may of Thee partake ; 
Nothing can be so mean 
That with this tincture, ' For thy sake/ 
Will not grow fair and clean. 

" A servant with this clause 
Makes drudgery divine ; 
Who sweeps a room as to thy laws 
Makes that and th' action fine." 

The moment Christ becomes your ideal you will 
hear him teaching you that to be his disciple it is 
not necessary to do singular things : it is only neces- 
sary "to do common things singularly well." 

The second essential to make this mission we call 
life a successful one is steadfastness of purpose. 
Conquerors are men who have given and taken 
hard blows. On their knees in the dust one mo- 
ment, before their adversary can cry " Surrender !" 
they are up again and ready to charge. General 
Grant used to say there was a time in every hard- 
fought battle when both sides were beaten ; the 
commander who strikes the first hard blow after 



IS LIFE A CAREER, OR A MISSION f 19 

that wins the battle. The man who is easily dis- 
couraged, who believes the first person who says, 
"You'll never amount to anything," and either 
gets out of the fight altogether or gives only half- 
hearted blows, certainly never will amount to very 
much. But the man who is determined, who ex- 
pects to get a good many hard knocks and some 
severe wounds, and who knows how to die, but not 
how to retreat or surrender, is sure in the end to 
win if he is fighting on the right side — on God's 
side. Are you down now ? Are you out of work ? 
Are you thoroughly discouraged ? Don't give up ! 
I saw a list the other day of our most successful 
business-men, and in almost every instance you had 
only to go back ten, fifteen or twenty years to find 
these very men, now on the crest of the wave, in 
the trough of the sea. They wouldn't be beaten, 
and so they couldn't be. 

"The heights by great men reached and kept 
Were not attained by sudden flight, 
But they, while their companions slept, 
Were toiling upward in the night." 

Have no fear of the night. Christ, your Brother, 
waits for you there in the darkness, and he will lead 
you, if you trust him, safe through to the light be- 
yond. Let your ideal of life be that of a high and 
holy mission. Set yourself determinedly to work 
the works of Hira who sent you, wheresoever 
you are and in the midst of whatever discourage- 



20 BEGINNING LIFE. 

ments, aud it needs even now no prophet to write 
your epitaph. The world may never think you 
a brilliant success ; but when you die, " all nature 
will rise up and say, This was a man," and those 
who knew you best will say, "This was a Chris- 
tian man." And Christ has promised that he will 
have something to say to such a one that will thrill 
the soul as all the honors of the court and the camp 
and the forum never could. 



II. 

YOUTH. 



II. 

YOUTH. 

" Let no man despise thy youth."— 1 Tim. iv. 12. 

YOUTH is in danger of having contempt put 
upon it by those who are young and wish they 
were older, and those who are old and wish they 
were younger. They who have it are tempted to 
underestimate a familiar possession, as they who 
have it no longer are tempted to belittle that which 
is for ever beyond their reach. Timothy, like all 
youthful teachers, was exposed to the possibility 
of being unappreciated by those of his own age 
and ignored by those who were no longer young ; 
Timothy himself is in danger of falsely appraising 
that for which even Paul seems to offer an indirect 
apology, and of sometimes wishing he were not em- 
barrassed by such riches. Nothing makes a young 
person blush so quickly as to be charged with youth. 
Probably every young man wishes himself older as 
fervently as most old men wish themselves younger. 
Not till we pass through youth and look back upon 
it do we see how very far indeed it was from being 
a despicable epoch in our lives. Youth is like a 
picture from which we must be removed, a little 

23 



24 BEGINNING LIFE. 

way, at least — if we would see it properly. " Happy 
are the young, for they have life before them," we 
are sure must have been said by a man who was 
thus removed by the consciousness of swiftly-coming 
old age. 

" There are gains for all our losses, 
There are balms for all our pains ; 
But when youth, the dream, departs, 
It takes something from our hearts, 
And it never comes again." 

What prodigals we all are in youth ! We spend 
like princes, as if we had royal treasuries to draw 
from. What spendthrifts we are of time ! Our 
only question concerning it is how we shall pass it 
most quickly and pleasantly by. A queen proffers 
her realm for an inch of time, and the youth flings 
away with a light heart the small coin of days and 
weeks and the larger pieces of months and years. 
We laugh at the clock and statistics and preachers 
when we are young. Nothing seems to us so ab- 
surd as the undeniable proofs they give us that after 
a decade or so of years this youth that we have ac- 
customed ourselves to think of as belonging to us, 
like our names or our physiognomies, will be ours no 
longer, and we shall be old then like those people 
who we think were probably always venerable. 
We can more easily think of ourselves as wanting 
anything else than time. Youth has such a way of 
prolonging years into cycles ! Perhaps even the 
queen who bid so high for that single inch of time 



YOUTH. 25 

was once young, and had, as you have now, more 
of it at her disposal than she knew what to do with. 

What a spendthrift youth is of health ! A pe- 
rennial spring it seems of an inexhaustible supply. 
Only at dawn and in the early morning the fabled 
fountain of Amnion overflowed, but this fountain 
bubbles and leaps and shoots high its waters all the 
long day of youth. What wonder that like careless 
servants we should let the waters waste, too indiffer- 
ent to husband that which we think limitless ! What 
would not the old man give for even a few drops 
of those waters he scattered in youth ! All your 
wealth then will not seem to you an exorbitant price 
for that of which you think now as without value. 
More than Lucullus ever spent on any of his ban- 
quets hard-headed business-men stand ready to pay 
for a single meal of the simplest sort eaten w T ith the 
appetite of health. They are almost ready to barter 
any hopes they may have had of a paradise of un- 
ending delights for a day of such fresh, keen joy 
as they had almost too many of in their youth. 

What a spendthrift youth is of hope ! Its exag- 
gerated vision brings everything easily within the 
range of the possible. All these graduates who 
will emerge this spring from our twelve universi- 
ties and three hundred and thirty-three colleges 
know just how to set the rivers on fire ; and if it 
is worth while, they will do it. They will put 
right the times that are out of joint. The world 
has waited for them with surprising and commend- 



26 BEGINNING LIFE. 

able patience, but the world shall find that it did 
well in waiting. "Youth faces the sun, and all 
the shadows fall behind out of sight." Why croak 
about them? Why not forget that there are any 
shadows? Alas that even such apparently inex- 
haustible treasures should at last fail — that they 
who once saw everything rose-tinted should come 
at last to see everything in a cold hard light whose 
rays are like javelins stabbing every hope dead at 
the moment of its birth ! 

What a spendthrift, too, youth is of opportuni- 
ties ! They are so bewilderingly abundant ! Any 
effort to seize them is like plucking flowers in an 
interminable garden. There are beds everywhere 
as far as the eye can reach, and each bed seems 
more beautiful than the other. Why stop here 
rather than there? Just as the hand is about to 
gather one the eye catches a glimpse of another more 
exquisite still. So at last with empty hands the 
exit is reached. They are very young indeed who 
do not look back already to other days when there 
were many things that might have been could they 
but have brought themselves to take the opportu- 
nity that was offered, but it seemed so improbable 
that other opportunities still more desirable would 
not, and that very soon, come within reach, that for 
the most part they were allowed to slip by, often 
without any recognition whatever. 

" Ah ! five and twenty years ago 
Had I but planted seeds of trees, 



YOUTH. 27 

How now I should enjoy their 
Shade, and see their fruit 
Swing in the breeze !" 

Most fortunate man was that poet if he had noth- 
ing more serious to lament than that. There are 
very few whose memory takes them back even half 
the five and twenty years who cannot see many 
places where, through neglect on their part, much 
sadder mistakes were made. " Had we," they say, 
" but studied in school or in college, what an edu- 
cation we might have had ! Being educated, what 
might we not have accomplished ! Had we been 
industrious in that first position we got in the store, 
we might have stayed there to this day, and been 
promoted as rapidly as some we know. Had we 
resisted this appetite that now cries with loud voice 
almost ceaselessly for gratification, it might long 
ago have been quieted or hushed altogether. Had 
we but begun at this or that epoch to live as we feel 
now, and as we felt then we ought to live, by this 
time a good life, an open, aggressive Christian life, 
would have become almost a second nature to us, and 
the agonies through which, as we imagine, at least, 
we must now pass before we can enter on such a 
life would have been avoided altogether." 

Youth is rich, too, in fancy. There are no col- 
ors on the painter's palette like those with which 
youth transforms this sombre world. It is optim- 
istic, or should be. It has high aspirations and 
no doubts of their realization. It is a time of im- 



28 BEGINNING LIFE. 

pressions — of first impressions. The world is all 
new. Its joys and its sorrows alike come with the 
dew on them. A word, a gesture, a look, are pho- 
tographed on the sensitized plate that youth keeps 
always exposed, and half a century hence the lines 
made in that minute fragment of a moment will 
still be as clear as on the first day. There are im- 
pressions traced long ago on your soul that you 
would willingly erase. You can forget many things 
with only too great ease. The book you read, the 
scenes you saw, the conversation you heard, yester- 
day, are already gliding into that mist that swarms 
with dim and vanishing outlines ; but the book you 
read, the scenes you saw, the conversation you heard, 
twenty or fifty years ago are as distinct as if but an 
hour had passed. The same events could not cut 
themselves as deeply now into your memory. The 
material has hardened. It is crossed and recrossed 
with lines, and the cut must be very sharp and deep 
indeed to stand out clear and distinct now after 
many days. It goes without saying that youth is 
the time when one should most hesitate to expose 
one's self to undesirable impressions. 

Youth is as impulsive as it is impressionable. 
" The heart controls in youth ; in manhood the 
head takes the lead." It would be sad for the 
world if the epoch of impulse were altogether 
omitted. There would be few mistakes certainly 
if we were all born into that period where the head 
takes the lead, but there would as certainly be few 



YOUTH. 29 

heroic deeds that send the blood rushing with almost 
dangerous rapidity through the veins, and that give 
even the dull-eyed a glimpse of "the far-off land 
of beauty and of goodness." It is to the young 
the world looks to have her cold old heart warmed 
now and then by some chivalric act, by some splen- 
did exhibition of valor and of self-sacrifice. It is 
to the young, an old man says, the world must look 
for even intellectual quickening. " New ideas build 
their nests," he says, " in young brains." " Revo- 
lutions are not made by men in spectacles, and the 
whisperings of new truths are not caught by those 
who begin to feel the need of an ear-trumpet." 
The outward change, the dimmed eye, the wrinkled, 
colorless cheek, the trembling hand, have ordina- 
rily their counterpart within. Neither heart nor 
brain can escape the shriveling touch of old age. 
As we grow old we become stolid, and it is scarcely 
-worth while for a great thought or a fine impulse 
to visit us then for the first time and run the risk 
of being refused admission as a stranger or of being 
turned out ignominiously as a disturber of the peace. 
No man in England over forty years of age, it is 
said, could be persuaded at the time it was made 
that Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the 
blood was anything but a plausible theory of an 
ignorant quack calculated to deceive only the super- 
ficially educated. " New ideas build their nests in 
young brains." 

Youth is the age of faith — of credulity, if you 



30 BEGINNING LIFE. 

please. No Munchausen tale can be too marvelous 
for its digestion. The wonders of the Arabian Nights 
are not half wonderful enough for its appetite. It 
has no experience from which to build a conception 
of the ordinary or the possible. It must, therefore, 
believe what it hears and reads. Every man is re- 
ceived at his own appraisement by the young. If 
he claims to know everything and to be able to do 
anything, youth has no inclination or reason for dis- 
puting his most colossal assumptions. A difference 
of six months in age, of an inch in stature, is sufficient 
to make a hero of the older and larger boy for the 
younger and smaller. Kings do not so overwhelm us 
in middle life as the big boy in youth. Every child's 
father is the strongest and wisest and best man in 
all the world, from whose hand it is almost as easy 
to take a creed as to take an apple. The most stu- 
pendous statements are swallowed with nearly as 
great ease as is the most luscious fruit. Fathers 
who believe anything themselves are criminally care- 
less if they do not make wise use of this receptive 
period to write their own faith indelibly on the 
child's heart. 

Youth is like a fair unwalled city open to the 
enemy on every side. Its very virtues are like or- 
namented terraces, concealing enemies in their ap- 
proach and serving, when skillfully used by an adroit 
foe, as breastworks affording the most complete pro- 
tection from the missiles of the beleaguered. With 
what satanic ingenuity has each of those qualities 



YOUTH. 31 

that make youth most attractive been used to ac- 
complish its ruin ! 

But youth is by no means an unmixed aggrega- 
tion of virtues. It has weaknesses somewhat pecu- 
liar to itself, as well as numerous others that are the 
common inheritance of humanity at every epoch. 
Curiosity, while not confined to youth, is supposed 
to be most vigorous then. Pandora was very young 
when her curiosity got the better of her and she 
lifted the lid of the forbidden jar and filled the world, 
the legend says, with all the ills that trouble men 
and make them sometimes doubt whether life is 
worth living. It is in youth that we are most 
tempted to follow Pandora's example and fill our 
lives with evils that can never be gathered up again 
and thrust back into the jar whose lid should not 
have been disturbed. Where is the man who as a 
boy was content till he had made himself half sick 
with a cigar, or had burnt his tongue with fire-water, 
or had defiled his lips with an oath, "just to see 
how it would seem " to do those things that he saw 
other half-grown boys and men doing ? " You 
ought to try it and see what it's like " is the com- 
monest, and not infrequently the most effective, form 
of temptation with which youth is allured into the 
paths whose end is disappointment and pain and 
death. 

There are stronger desires as well that are not 
satisfied with a sip and a taste. Neither are these 
coarse appetites frightened into silence when the 



32 BEGINNING LIFE. 

air is filled with flying terrors that should never 
have been let loose. The most destructive exhi- 
bition of passion in the world's history has been 
by young men. Paris was young when to grat- 
ify a whim he plunged Greece and Troy into a 
merciless war. Antony was young when he sac- 
rificed an empire for a few days of sensuous joy. 
Napoleon was young when he shook every throne 
and laid every capital of Europe under tribute 
to gratify his insatiable ambition. Even Renan 
warned the students of Paris the other day not to 
let the strong desires of youth raise up for them 
ghosts to fill the air with their maledictions. 

Youth should be — must be — the time of decision. 
You are the prize, young men and maidens, for 
which hosts contend. The aged for the most part 
are already apportioned, but both Folly and Wis- 
dom lift up their voices and plead with you. You 
cannot be long undecided. You will consent to be 
led in the mad dance of death or straight forward 
on paths of pleasantness and peace. This is a time 
of would-be procrastination. You wish to wait. 
You are trying to conjugate every verb in the fu- 
ture. You like to say what you will do after a 
few months or years. But God is pressing you by 
every high and holy motive to make your decision 
now for truth and righteousness and Christ. Then 
you will be a divinely-directed soul, and the promise 
of youth shall be fulfilled in a useful manhood, an 
honored old age and an eternity of unspeakable joy. 



III. 
FRIENDSHIPS, 



III. 

FRIENDSHIPS. 

" A man that hath friends must show himself friendly ; and 
there is a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother ." — Pnov. 
xviii. 24. 

THERE are cold-blooded batrachian creatures 
who have no desire for friends. " We can do 
very well," they say, " without any such sickly 
sentimentality as that form of selfishness that masks 
itself under the romantic guise of friendship. It is 
well enough for very young people," they sneer, 
"to swear eternal fealty to one another in an oath 
that may be sacredly kept till the crescent moon that 
witnessed it becomes a completely rounded circle, 
but men who have cut their wisdom-teeth see that 
that sort of thing is dangerous business." 

When you let outsiders get too far into your life, 
you have put yourself in their hands and you are 
at their mercy. You have doubled the complica- 
tions and cares of life. You must look out now not 
only for yourself, but for that much-less-to-be- 
trusted second self who may unmake you by an un- 
thinking admission or a designed disclosure. The 
best of friends are broken reeds that are bound sooner 

35 



36 BEGINNING LIFE. 

or later to pierce the hand that leans upon them, 
and friends of the average sort are like sand between 
the teeth ; the sooner you get rid of them, the better. 
This is a very uninviting account to give of a re- 
lation about which so many fine things have been 
said, but the men who give it us are not ordinarily par- 
ticularly fine men. They talk as Guy Fawkes and 
his accomplices might have done ; and if their great 
purpose in life resembles in any way that of Fawkes, 
they are justified in being as chary as he of friend- 
ships and confidences. The young rarely suffer 
from such aggravated attacks of misanthropy. A 
young person's heart is said to be " like a child's 
mouth, into which everything is put." They are 
as eager for friendships as for candies and cakes 
and ices, and are as ready in one case as the other 
to accept very poor imitations in place of the pure 
article. They do not always know the difference. 
Did not your father and mine understand this? 
Else why did they warn us, when we went to the 
school or the college or the store, to make haste 
slowly in our friendships ? They may have forgot- 
ten that Shakespeare ever said, 

" But do not dull thy palm with entertainment 
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade." 

They may not even have had in mind the warnings 
Solomon sprinkled thick amongst his proverbs for 
those who have clasped hands and exchanged vows 
with strangers ; they were speaking altogether from 



FRIENDSHIPS. 37 

observation and experience, but that did not make 
their words any less pointed and weighty. 

That we did not take their warnings as much to 
heart as we might have done w T as natural too : our 
pride was a little hurt that it was thought possible 
for us to be so easily deceived as to make such warn- 
ings necessary. It was hurt a little more at the in- 
sinuation that our friendship was not such a suffi- 
cient prize in itself as to make it necessary to suggest 
some ulterior motive in the professed seekers of it. 
And when the warning was directed toward friends 
we had already made, it took on a still less attractive 
form. How unkind it seemed to arouse suspicion 
of one so fair of face and form and speech and man- 
ner, so witty and wise, as our dearest friend ! How 
unfair to presume that if there was anything wrong 
we who knew him so well would not have discovered 
it ! What young David Copperfield has ever had a 
doubt of the Steerforths till suggested, and has not 
spurned it then ? Where are the young men and 
the young maidens who believe for a moment that 
the citadel of their lives may be in greatest danger 
from attacks made under the guise of friendship, 
and that the great tempter may use their friend as 
hunters use the decoy elephant to lead his unsuspi- 
cious acquaintances, with many a caress of his pro- 
boscis, straight to the traps arranged for them ? If 
the elephants were on their guard, they would very 
quickly detect these frauds ; and if you were on your 



38 BEGINNING LIFE. 

guard, you would very quickly detect these false 
friends. 

There are certain signs that always betray the 
dangerous applicant for your friendship. One of 
these signs is frivolity. It does not necessarily fol- 
low that because a man has a long face and walks 
with all the dignity of a stork he is particu- 
larly trustworthy. Monkeys steal and play all 
sorts of mean tricks with very grave countenances, 
but the creature, man or woman, that is always 
laughing, that giggles in the school, on the street 
and in the church, and considers no fact in life of 
any significance that cannot easily be giggled over, is 
a mere clown to whom the world is a great circus, 
and the giggling you hear is only the tinkling of 
the bells in the fool's cap. Wit and humor are 
most estimable, most desirable. They act like 
springs. While they do not smooth the road more 
or less hard we all must travel, they ease the bumps 
and jolts most pleasantly. The man who can make 
others laugh a clear, ringing laugh with no Schuyl- 
kill-like mud in it prevents many a visit from the 
family doctor, the man who can laugh such a laugh 
himself may be most of the time his own physician ; 
but perpetual cachinnation is the laughter of fools, 
that to Solomon's wise ear sounded like " the crack- 
ling of thorns under the pot." There is no depth, 
no seriousness, in such a nature. Beware of these 
gigglers as sailors beware of waters that break with 



FRIENDSHIPS. 39 

every breeze into white-caps and foam. There are 
shallows, quicksands, perhaps, under those pretty- 
waves. 

Another sign that should warn you that your 
would-be friend must prove a dangerous compan- 
ion is cynicism. He smiles often, this candidate 
for favor, but there is no spontaneity to it. It 
sounds more like a hiss than like a laugh as it 
comes from his half-closed teeth. His lip curls 
constantly at mention of things you were taught 
to reverence. He sneers at all the " old worn-out 
ideas," so he calls them, of industry and hon- 
esty, of virtue and religion. He makes his mock 
at the Church and at the Sunday-school, and won- 
ders that a person of your good sense can counte- 
nance such instruments of superstition. He more 
than hints that only children pray and only old 
women and weak-minded men read their Bibles. 
It was such friends that laughed one of the strong- 
est-winged poets of England out of the faith of his 
early manhood and left him to die without hope, a 
stranger in a strange land. Such friends will sneer 
away your belief both in God and in man. They 
will cover with ice all the one-time warm springs 
of feeling and emotion. They will bring you to 
classify men of every sort as simply as they have 
done into the two categories of the " openly bad 
and the secretly bad." They will take away your 
heart of flesh, and will give you a mere muscle like 



40 BEGINNING LIFE. 

their own, whose only function is to keep up the 
circulation. They will steal away the weapons with 
which you once guarded your treasures, and then 
they will steal these treasures themselves, persuad- 
ing you, at the same time, that they all, purity, 
truth, honor, virtue, goodness, God or man's, have 
no existence except in the diseased imagination. 
They will leave you, like a disarmed, dismantled 
and stranded ship-of-war on some unknown coast, 
with nothing to fight with or for. Beware of such 
friends. 

Another warning sign of danger from a would- 
be friend is dissimulation. He comes, this candi- 
date for favor, with no ceaseless laugh of frivolity 
or perpetual sneer of cynicism, for his finger is upon 
his lips, as if detectives were on his track and as if 
silence were his only hope. He whispers the com- 
monest facts into your ear as if they were dead se- 
crets. He has unutterable things to tell you which 
he will communicate only on your pledge never to 
breathe them to any one, especially to your parents 
and your teachers. Only rely upon him, and he 
assures you of his readiness to show you how to enjoy 
every forbidden pleasure without running any risk 
of committing the unpardonable sin of being found 
out. All his pockets are filled with a peculiar kind 
of very fine dust, which he throws into too watch- 
ful eyes with the greatest skill. These " friends" 
are in every school, in both the boys' and the girls' 



FRIENDSHIPS. 41 

departments, always ready to give unpaid instruc- 
tion in the art of breaking rules without being caught. 
They teach the boys how to get cigarettes and illus- 
trated newspapers, and the girls how to get forbid- 
den sweets and yellow-backed novels, without such 
old fogies as parents and teachers being any the wiser. 
They will show these same pupils of theirs, as they 
become a little more apt, how to go to the theatres 
and to visit dance-halls without arousing suspicion 
in the unsympathetic hearts of their aged guardians. 
These dissimulators will be as false to you as they 
are false to the old folks whom they are teaching 
you to outwit. They are false to you now. They 
are giving you false and fatal ideas of life and hap- 
piness ; and when these ideas have resulted in your 
ruin, as unhindered they inevitably will, the dis- 
simulator, too astute to be caught himself, will 
stand aside and laugh at you for going so far down 
the path along which his own hand pushed you. 

Still another dangerous sign in an acquaintance 
who desires promotion to friendship is extrava- 
gance. It shows itself, probably, at first, only in 
speech. Every sentence is overloaded with adjec- 
tives. As the spendthrift handles nothing but 
gold or silver, so your would-be friend deals in 
no smaller coin than superlatives and compara- 
tives. He sees everything on an exaggerated scale. 
If it were not that his pulse is normal, you would 
easily believe him to be breathing pure oxygen all 



42 BEGINNING LIFE. 

the time. By just so much as he exaggerates him- 
self and his ways he belittles you and yours. He 
makes you ashamed of your home : it is so unas- 
suming. He calls it "inadequate" for such a per- 
son as you, by a little instruction from him, would 
soon become. He makes you ashamed of your 
old father and mother. He is very careful not to 
say so in words, but he makes you feel that they 
are hardly such progenitors as you might have been 
expected to have. Under his influence your manner 
toward them changes : it becomes less deferential, 
not to say less respectful. You feel as you never 
did before that they are by no means necessary to 
your happiness, and that they might easily become 
hindrances to it. He makes you ashamed of your 
work. You were ready to have every one congrat- 
ulate you like a cabinet-officer six months ago, when 
you got a place in the mill or the store or on the rail- 
road ; but that was before you had met this friend. 
He isn't doing much himself, perhaps nothing at 
all just at present, but he makes the impression on 
you that there are very few T pairs of shoes anywhere 
much too large for him to step into whenever he 
chooses. You have only to talk with him a few 
minutes at any time to have all the zest taken out 
of your work. You go back to the spindles or 
the counter or the office with a dull, heavy sense 
in your heart that all this is beneath you, that 
you ought to be an employer instead of being an 



FRIENDSHIPS. 43 

employ*?, a wholesale instead of a retail dealer, a 
leader in society instead of a director or a directress 
of the formless thoughts of very young people and 
little children to uninteresting and stupid subjects. 
His touch has the same effect upon your income as 
upon your work : it shrinks into itself as some sen- 
sitive things do when rudely handled. You won- 
der that you were ever satisfied with it as you see 
it now in the light he has thrown upon it. Why 
should you exert such abilities as he assures you you 
possess — and you have long suspected it — for such 
an insignificant remuneration ? " Almost better to 
take nothing at all than so little," you say, and he 
says, "Quite right; now you talk like yourself." 
So you give up the position that has become too 
small for your enlarged self-conceit, and look around 
for something really first class, something that will 
be worthy of your hitherto unrecognized abilities. 
While you are looking you find some things for 
which you were not on the lookout. You find that 
you can't live comfortably on big words, even in- 
flated so perfectly as your friend's words are ; that 
the coat you thought too shabby to wear when you 
gave up work is steadily gaining only in lightness 
of weight and in increased reflective power ; that the 
appraisement you had set upon yourself is suffer- 
ing, in spite of your indignation that it should be so, 
by the lack of demand for your valuable services. 
But your friend does not desert you. He reveals 



44 BEGINNING LIFE. 

to you the fact that there are many ways of living 
well without going through the commonplace rou- 
tine of what is called "making a living." He 
explains to you how feasible some of these are. 
It is an opportune moment for the tempter, such 
a moment as Jacob took to show Esau how he might 
have a good meal of savory pottage without getting 
it for himself; so opportune that you too, like Esau, 
sell your birthright as a son of God, as an heir, 
through Christ, of heaven, for the thing now within 
your reach that you want so very much. 

Or your extravagant friend, while he says noth- 
ing about your work or your income from it, gives 
his attention to your recreations and amusements. 
They have always been of the simplest and least 
expensive kind. You were brought up to think 
first of how much cloth you had, and then of how to 
cut the pattern to fit it ; but your friend soon con- 
vinces you that this is a very plebeian method indeed. 
There are certain forms of enjoying one's self that 
are entirely respectable and appropriate. Others 
may be cheaper, but they are impossible except to 
those who are so far below public opinion as to be 
indifferent to it. That these are expensive is unfor- 
tunately true, but this is no reason why you should 
deny yourself of them. Your whole style of liv- 
ing is gradually changed to suit these new pleasures, 
and, while your income remains the same, vour ex- 
penses have been doubled. There can be nothing 



FRIENDSHIPS. 45 

before you but bankruptcy or Canada ; and Canada 
is bankruptcy. 

But you will reform this extravagant friend of 
yours. He is, you confess, somewhat too fast now. 
He will undoubtedly be ruined financially, social- 
ly, morally, if he cannot be checked in his impet- 
uous downward course, but who so well adapted 
to put on the brakes as yourself? You are willing 
to be his friend. You are sympathetic; you under- 
stand him. You go part-way with him, and there- 
fore he will be most likely to halt when you give 
the sign, and retrace his steps under your direction. 
You may give the sign if you are not too intoxi- 
cated yourself with the delightful rapidity of mo- 
tion, but he will pay as much attention to it as a 
runaway horse pays to a child's hand on the rein. 
If your friend is to be reformed, it will need some 
one older and firmer than yourself. For you to 
go part way with him will only mean two lives 
ruined instead of one. 

This capacity for friendship of which we are 
most of us conscious — does it mean nothing? is it 
never to be gratified ? Are you, who see in each 
new acquaintance a possible friend — one who shall 
understand you, who shall make it possible for you 
to be and express your true best self, — are you to be 
perpetually disappointed ? 

If you admit into your life these frivolous, cynical, 
dissimulating and extravagant friends against whom 



46 BEGINNING LIFE. 

you have been warned, you will have made the 
coming of the true friend impossible. A man 
that hath friends is a man who has shown himself 
friendly. He has exhibited such qualities as attract 
real, true friends, more reliable, even, than blood- 
relations. Jonathan never would have given his 
friendship, one of the purest and noblest in the 
world's history, to David if David had not been 
the man he was. It was because Damon was worthy 
of Pythias, and Pythias worthy of Damon, that each 
thought it a privilege to die for the other. The 
slightest shadow of insincerity, of self-seeking, in 
either would have acted upon their friendship as an 
insulating substance acts upon an electric magnet. 
The two hearts held so tightly together by the mys- 
terious current flowing through them, that even death 
could not tear them asunder, would have fallen in- 
stantly apart like two bars of iron suddenly demag- 
netized. 

For a true friend any sacrifice of pride, of ambi- 
tion, of ease, comfort, is worth making. He cannot 
be kept without a willingness to make such a sacri- 
fice should it be needed. For a true friend even 
the sacrifice of his friendship is worth making if 
the occasion calls for it. Sir Walter Raleigh thought 
this the final test. " Thou mayest be sure/' he says, 
" that he that will in private tell thee of thy faults 
is thy friend; for he adventures thy dislike and 
doth hazard thy hatred." If done in the right 



FRIENDSHIPS. 47 

spirit, your friend is giving you the highest possible 
proof of his friendship when he opens your eyes to 
see some fault or weakness that might very easily, 
if undiscovered, prove fatal. " Faithful are the 
wounds of a friend." There are none so painful, none 
that cut so deep, but they are clean and healthy and 
ought to heal rapidly. " Better be a nettle in the 
side of your friend than his echo." 

The friend such as we desire Emerson thinks is 
a dream and a fable. The friend who is perfectly 
true and perfectly tender, and who understands us 
as we do not understand ourselves, is to be found 
only in ideal descriptions ; and Emerson is right if 
we confine our search unnecessarily, as he seems to 
have done. He tells us of the world's great heroes 
and seems to have fathomed their virtues and vices, 
but he has very little, if anything, to tell us of a cer- 
tain Judean Teacher whose character has now been 
scrutinized with extremest care for two thousand 
years without the discovery of a single blot. Why 
will not this Man from Nazareth serve as the ideal 
friend ? He was perfectly true and perfectly tender, 
and he constantly showed that he knew more of men 
than they knew of themselves. Why cannot the 
Goethes and Voltaires and R^nans and Emersons 
take him for their friend if they will not take him 
as their Saviour? By their own confession he was 
all they seek or could desire. They posed before 
the world as philosophers, but has he a right to be 



48 BEGINNING LIFE. 

called a lover of wisdom who when he acknowledg- 
ed ly sees what he professes to seek refuses to receive 
it? We do not call ourselves philosophers, but we 
may easily be more philosophical than they. The 
ideal friend is not to appear in some distant golden 
age : he has appeared. He seeks us because we 
have need of him. He asks us to be enrolled amongst 
the number of his friends. " Ye have not chosen 
me," he says, "but I have chosen you." The 
conditions for becoming and remaining his friend 
are of the simplest sort : " Ye are my friends if 
ye do whatsoever I command you;" and his com- 
mands are not impossible or unreasonable. We are 
to love one another, to be kind and forgiving and 
helpful. We are to do right ourselves, and to assist 
every one else, as far as we can, to do right. This 
is all, and in return he will befriend us always. He 
will give us the use of his name. He will lend us 
his strength as we struggle with our appetites and our 
sins. He will hold our hands when we stumble ; and 
when we come to the river from the touch of whose 
waters we all shrink, his grasp will tighten when the 
grasp of other hands that have tenderly pressed our 
own is no longer felt. He will be with us in the new 
life that opens beyond, and will be our constant guide 
and instructor till the home-feeling comes to us. 
Why should you live a day longer without this 
Friend ? "I do not wonder," says Euskin, " at 
what men suffer ; I do wonder at what they lose." 



IV. 
WHAT SHALL WE READ ? 



IV. 

WHAT SHALL WE READ ? 

" Of making many books there is no end : and much study 
is a weariness of the flesh." — Eccl. xii. 13. 

SOLOMON'S lament over the endless number 
of books in the world would have gained some- 
thing in intensity and pathos could he have foreseen 
the public libraries of Berlin, Paris, London, Wash- 
ington and Philadelphia. He sighed when he looked 
upon a few hundred carefully-copied manuscripts 
lying on the shelves of his royal library. " What's 
the use," he thought, " of so many ? No man can 
read them all." Wise as the weary king was, he 
could have had no conception of the rate at which 
books were to be increased later on in the world's 
history. As we think of it our grief at the burning 
of two hundred thousand volumes at Alexandria is 
in some degree assuaged. 

For the last fifty years the world has been over- 
whelmed by the rising tide of a bibliographic flood. 
It is no longer possible to place boundaries beyond 
which it cannot pass. Colossal reservoirs like those 
at Washington have proven ridiculously inadequate. 
The Oriental metaphor appears on the verge of 

51 



52 BEGINNING LIFE. 

transformation into a fact: not even the world 
itself will be able to contain the books that shall 
be written. The danger that now threatens the 
race is a new deluge, but of ink. We cannot escape 
it. We must plunge in, but there is a decided 
choice among the pools. Some are as clear as 
crystal ; some are the congenial homes of foul mud- 
monsters. To read anything or everything is as 
dangerous as to eat anything or everything. The 
results may be as much more serious as character 
is of more value than health. As scarcely any other 
agency has a more marked influence than books upon 
character, this question of what we shall read is im- 
mensely important. Not a few of the dangers to 
which we are exposed in reading will be avoided 
by the adoption of some general plan if we keep 
as well as adopt it. As curiosity is one of the very 
first and strongest qualities exhibited by most hu- 
man beings, why not take this as a hint, and begin by 
reading books that will satisfy our curiosity ? Facts 
are the food which this appetite in a healthy condi- 
tion craves, and the young person of our day is 
invited to an absolutely inexhaustible banquet of 
facts, in spite of Dr. Johnson's assertion — which 
may have been true when made — that u nothing is 
so hard to get at as a fact." 

AVhat form does your curiosity take? Are you 
curious to know something about this earth on 
which you live? about the silent planets above? 
about your own body and brain ? That is nat- 



WHAT SHALL WE BEAD? 53 

ural ; that is laudable. And here are books on 
geology, botany, mineralogy, on astronomy, on 
physiology and psychology and biology, that will 
answer just the questions that are, or ought to be, 
on the ends of vour tongues. Are Dana and Gray 
and Herschel and Hooker and Carpenter and Spen- 
cer a little too thorough in their anxiety that none 
of your questions should be unanswered ? Does 
your mind wander while they are preparing you 
to understand all the bearings of the answer they 
are about to make? Then put your questions to 
men whose intellectual processes are more rapid, 
if not always so exhaustive. 

Just as there is an immense amount of indiges- 
tion caused by food not adapted to the tender years 
of the eater of it, so is there intellectual . indiges- 
tion and much antipathy caused by an illy-adapted 
mental diet. You and I might have been very 
fond of certain sciences from which now we recoil 
if we had not taken too much of them or in a form 
too condensed. Our children ought to escape such 
dyspeptic attacks. All kinds of brain-food, even 
scientific, are now served in such forms as to be 
perfectly digestible for the young. There are so- 
called primers, written with great care and by men 
of great learning, on each of the sciences, in which 
you will find your questions answered most simply 
and interestingly. You will not have the right to 
set yourself up as an authority on the particular sub- 
ject about which you have just read a " Primer/' but 



54 BEGINNING LIFE. 

you ought at least to be able to comprehend the 
force and drift of the arguments used by professed 
authorities, and you will not feel yourself compelled 
to give an unqualified assent to the wildest scientific 
vagaries because you are aware of the fact that you 
do not know enough to do anything else. The 
primer will at least have taught you that you must 
have scientific proof before a theory can be accepted 
as a scientific fact. 

Are you curious to know what has happened to 
the race of which you are a part since it first found 
itself on the earth, under the stars ? Here stand his- 
torians in a long line, from Herodotus to the man 
who passed you on the street yesterday, all eager 
and anxious to tell you just what you wish to know. 
It may help you to choose amongst all these appli- 
cants for the office of historical instructor to your 
High Mightiness to remember what Professor Por- 
ter, ex-president of Yale University, says of histo- 
rians and the two stages to one or the other of 
which all histories, past, present or future, belong. 
The first stage, he says, is that of simple narration, 
though the things narrated may not by any means 
be simple facts — will probably be in the proportion 
of one fact to two or more legends. In this stage 
belong the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer and 
all the mythical stories that have come clown to 
us of heroes like Romulus and Remus and demi- 
gods like Theseus and Hercules. To the second 
stage, in which two marked phases are distin- 



WHAT SHALL WE READ? 55 

guished, are placed the histories of Herodotus, 
Thucydides, Tacitus and Caesar. Here the propor- 
tion of fact and fancy or legend is changed. Now the 
facts largely preponderate; the legend diminishes, 
till in the last development of this second phase it 
disappears altogether. We have come now to the 
critical and philosophical type, the last and highest 
of which history is capable. We no longer have 
incredible legends of heroes or interminable lists of 
war-galleys and phalanxes, or of battles on sea or 
land, but the causes of things are ferreted out and 
explained. The development of a nation now over- 
tops in importance the fate of a beautiful woman or 
that of an extraordinarily strong man. This epoch 
began, Professor Porter says, with Niebuhr, and all 
the best historians since have taken their color from 
it. Every young person should wish to know some- 
thing of each of these stages, for we cannot under- 
stand any one of them unless we have some knowl- 
edge of the others ; we cannot understand the pres- 
ent without knowing something of the past. It is 
history that teaches us, as Lowell says, "why things 
are and must be so, and not otherwise." 

We must make a place here, if anywhere, for the 
newspaper. It has made a very large place for it- 
self, and is supremely indifferent as to whether it is 
classified or not. It is the most high-handed of all 
monopolists. It drives all rivals from the field. 
It excludes with rare impartiality all other forms 
of printed matter, from the bulky volume to the 



56 BEGINNING LIFE. 

magazine ; and yet this monster of insatiable maw 
has its rights. The present is of at least equal in- 
terest for us with the past. If we are properly 
curious to know what happened a thousand years 
ago, why may we not with equal propriety be inter- 
ested in knowing what happened yesterday ? When 
you read the telegram in your newspaper that Paris 
had capitulated to the Prussian king and his Ger- 
man allies, you were put in possession of an histori- 
cal fact of as great significance as the Homeric an- 
nouncement of the capture of Troy by Ulysses. 
When you read of the assassination of Abraham Lin- 
coln, you were getting news quite as momentous as 
that you had read in your ancient history of the 
murder of Julius Caesar. The newspaper has its 
legitimate field if we could but keep it there, but it 
becomes the tyrant of modern life when it drives 
out all rivals, as it is doing so effectually that pos- 
sibly the majority of masculine readers never read 
anything else. They take their three newspapers a 
day as regularly as their three meals, lowering the 
average only a little by reducing the allowance to 
one on the first day of the week. 

Also young persons ought to be specially curious 
as to the history of their own country. " Know 
thyself" was the best thing the Delphic oracle ever 
said in its inscriptions or its utterances. This wis- 
dom is as applicable to the state as to the individual. 
It is specially applicable to a republic like our own. 
If we are to have a successful government of the peo- 



WHAT SHALL WE BEAD? 57 

pie, for the people, by the people, we the people 
must know what we are trying to do, and why. It 
is by no means difficult to find young persons of both 
sexes who are more familiar with the history of 
Rome and France and England than with the story 
of our own nation. That the theme is a vast and 
intensely interesting one is being recognized by the 
best historical writers on both sides of the sea. We 
have no excuse for ignorance when such brilliant 
and fascinating teachers as the American McMaster 
and the English Bryce are perpetually ready to en- 
lighten us. 

But when your questions — scientific, historical, 
aesthetic — have been answered and your curiosity 
has been satisfied, you cannot give over reading if 
you wish your curiosity to end in culture. Mat- 
thew Arnold defines the cultured person as the one 
" who knows the best that has been thought and 
said in the world/' but one of our own poets lets us 
look upon a man who knew all these things and 
had failed of culture : 

u 'Twould be endless to tell you the things that he knew — 
All separate facts undeniably true, 
But with him or each other they'd nothing to do. 
No power of combining, arranging, discerning, 
Digesting the masses he learned into learning." 

So Burke thought that the cultured man is one who 
not only is in possession of the facts, but has also 
" the power of diversifying the matter infinitely in 
his own mind and applying it to every occasion that 



58 BEGINNING LIFE. 

arises." It is this power that the study of philoso- 
phy should develop. Such reading is not seduc- 
tively attractive to young people at first. Philoso- 
phy^ they say, for some one has told them so, is a 
great circle around which you may make your weary 
journey only to return to the point from which you 
started ; but in swinging round the circle many 
interesting, beautiful and useful things may be dis- 
covered. About the best way to find out how large 
a circle is and what's inside of it is to make the 
circumference of it. Philosophical reading will be 
of immense advantage to young people if it teaches 
them the limits of the human mind, the boundaries 
of thought. Swinging round the circle may save 
them many a tiresome and dangerous jaunt in quest 
of panaceas that philosophy, rightly understood, 
would convince them can have no existence. 

Imagination is another faculty of the mind that 
is hungry for food and that has a right to be 
fed. There is no dearth of such pabulum. Public 
libraries, book-stores, news-stands, have their shelves 
and counters filled with imaginative works. The 
book you were reading last night — I hope not this 
afternoon — was a novel. Nine out often of the books 
you will take away with you on your summer va- 
cation will be novels. Four paper-covered novels 
a day is the allowance that a certain Western lady 
at one time permitted herself. This is to turn a 
human being into a gargoyle. Such a stream flow- 
ing through the brain can leave behind it nothing 



WHAT SHALL WE READ? 59 

but a muddy sediment. Better not read at all than 
read in such a way. But there are works of the 
imagination against which no such charge can be 
laid. Scott and Cooper and Mrs. Stowe and Mrs. 
Whitney and Charles Dickens and Charles Reade have 
written novels that have become the fountain-heads 
of great reforms. The battle of faith and unbelief, 
Mr. Gladstone and Dr. McCosh think, is to be fought 
largely for the next fifty years in the pages of romance. 
Let the book you read be clean through and through. 
Let it be one that w T ill give you a serious and sensi- 
ble view of life. Let it be one of high literary merit ; 
and if it be made to take its place among the luxu- 
ries, and not the necessaries, such a romance, if it 
be read not on the sly, but with your parents' con- 
sent, may be for you what Spenser calls one of 

" The world's sweet inns from care and wearisome turmoil." 

All poetical works, from Dante to Shakespeare, 
from Milton to Whittier, must be classified as works 
of the imagination. They are not in the strict sense 
historic, scientific or philosophical, but they may be 
none the less valuable for that. There are practical, 
hard-headed — perhaps hard-hearted — men who enter 
their protest against anything, be it rhythm or blank 
verse, every line of which begins with a capital. If 
a man has a thought, why not express it in the sort 
of language in which we all think? Why dress it 
up in this fantastic guise? Ah, my hard-headed, 
hard-hearted friend, poets are born, not made; neither 



60 BEGINNING LIFE. 

can they be unmade by a protest. Have you for- 
gotten that the Psalms are poems, and that the book 
of Job is what Carlyle calls the grandest poem ever 
written? — though, unfortunately, the poetic form is 
concealed in King James's version in both instances. 
The Most High has set his approval on poetry, as 
he did also on imaginative prose, when the Christ 
spake only in parables. There are many things 
that it is well for you to deny yourself, but Tenny- 
son, Longfellow, Whittier and Browning do not 
belong to that category. 

If we make a wise use of historical, scientific, 
philosophical and imaginative books, then material 
enough will have been gathered for a rich and well- 
rounded life if all is concentrated upon some worthy 
purpose. This opens up a field for all inspirational 
works of every sort. There are numberless books 
suited to every taste that designedly attempt to im- 
bue their readers with lofty ideals of life. Perhaps 
the most famous of these are The Imitation of Christy 
by Thomas a Kempis, and The Pilgrim's Progress, 
by John Bunyan — a book that Macaulay ranks with 
Milton's Paradise Lost. 

The biographies of all heroic human souls, of every 
faith and time, are, though it may be undesignedly, 
intensely inspirational. From the life of St. Augus- 
tine to that of Stephen Grellet and Edward Pay- 
son, there is no story of triumph over the unholy 
trinity of the world, the flesh and the devil that will 
not ennoble our conception of humanity and fill us 



WHAT SHALL WE BEAD? 61 

with a desire to emulate these godly examples, A 
well-written biography will be for the unspoiled 
reader as interesting as a novel, and the substitution 
of the story of real life for the romance will be an 
unmistakable gain. 

France has just passed through an unexampled 
literary excitement. A book was thrown almost 
unheralded upon the market, and was bought up 
with such avidity that the presses could not supply 
the demand. It was reviewed at length by the 
leading newspapers of Paris and the provincial 
cities. There was but one opinion as to its interest 
and extreme value. It was not written by any of 
the popular literary favorites of the day. It was a 
translation of an old Greek book known to us as 
" The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
Christ." Most Frenchmen knew in a vague way 
that there was such a book. They had heard their 
priests refer to it and they had seen selections from 
it in their prayer-book, but very few of them had 
ever seen a complete copy in French. When Las- 
sarre's translation, with the benediction of the fish- 
erman His Holiness the pope, appeared, it was like 
a new revelation from Heaven. It was read in the 
cafe's, it was discussed on the boulevards, and it 
might have been the forerunner of such days as pre- 
ceded St. Bartholomew's had not the Jesuits become 
alarmed and persuaded the pope to revoke his bene- 
diction, and to place the book on the Index Expur- 
gatorius. We have that book in our homes ; no 



62 BEGINNTNG LIFE. 

papal fulminatiou can touch it. How often do we 
read it? Do we permit it to be pushed aside by his- 
tories and newspapers and magazines, by works on 
science and art, by romances and poems, by books of 
ethics and biography ? We make a mistake. This 
book combines, as no other does, as all others fused 
into one would not, history, philosophy, biography, 
high ideals and imperial purposes. " It is the best 
book that ever was or ever will be written," said 
Charles Dickens in a letter to his son. " Where- 
withal shall a young man cleanse his way ? by taking 
heed thereto according to thy word." Other books 
may lead you right for a time, and then, from ig- 
norance of the way themselves, leave you in the 
pathless desert or the trackless forest ; but no 
human being has ever honestly followed this guide 
that was not brought safe home at last. Better for 
any of us to neglect reading of any other sort rather 
than neglect this. We might thus cheat ourselves 
now and then of some "sweet inn from care and 
wearisome turmoil ; w but if there must be any choice, 
better cheat yourself of an inn or two along the way 
than of the eternal home at the end of the journey. 
Take down from the shelf, where it fell unnoticed 
months ago behind histories and novels, the Bible 
your mother gave you, and read with care and atten- 
tion never before given to it the biography you will 
find in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Read in 
the book of the Acts and in the Epistles how men's 
lives were changed by the touch of that life. See 



WHAT SHALL WE READ? 63 

how the enthralled of passion and appetite were freed, 
how the hopeless gained courage, how the restless 
and objectless found peace and a motive, and as you 
read the stolid, despairing look in your eyes will 
fade away. A new hope will steal like a blessed 
spirit into your heart, and you w r ill dare to do battle 
with yourself and the world in the inspiration that 
has come to you from that most human, most divine 
life. 



V. 
THE FORCING OF HABITS. 



V. 

THE FORMING OF HABITS. 

" Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." — 
Rom. xii. 21. 

ARISTOTLE, who was familiarly called "the 
Surgeon" from the keenness of his intellect- 
ual discrimination, was accustomed to say, "A 
man has formed a good habit when it causes no 
self-denial." Any act, good or bad, has become 
habitual when it is performed automatically and 
involuntarily. The momentum of many choices 
in the past makes any immediate action of the will 
unnecessary. It is a condition that has close anal- 
ogies to slavery where choice and action have no 
relation whatever. It is not unusual to hear a 
man confess that " he is a slave to habit." 

The grip that habit has upon all human beings 
results necessarily from our make-up. If we were 
pure intelligences, with no material enswathment, 
the power of habit would be lessened, perhaps, to 
an altogether inappreciable point; but the spirit 
has its setting in matter : we are resultants of the 
intermingling of these two diverse elements, and 

67 



68 BEGINNING LIFE. 

we become, in spite of every effort to the contrary, 
bundles of habits. 

The soul is a prisoner in its invisible holy of 
holies, and can send out or receive communications 
only by impressions made on the walls of its dun- 
geon. Light and sound come to it through little 
apertures easily closed, shutting the captive in to 
perpetual darkness and silence. Other sensations 
are carried along prepared channels from the ex- 
ternal world to the royal prisoner within. Here 
is a practically inexhaustible field for the develop- 
ment of habits. The body is not a perfectly flexi- 
ble instrument for the soul : it permits the soul to 
express itself only within well-defined limits, and 
the soul, becoming accustomed to these, ends by 
accepting the situation. What that situation is to 
be which is finally accepted depends very largely 
upon the moral, intellectual and physical habits 
that are formed before the gristle has altogether 
turned to bone. 

This is the purpose that all wise parents and 
teachers have before them constantly in dealing 
with their children and scholars. They try to 
bring every influence and motive to bear upon 
both mind and body, that right thinking and right 
acting may become habitual. Until a child can 
walk without any conscious effort at balancing it- 
self it does not know how to walk ; until it can 
eat without having to think where its mouth is 
and how to put the spoon into it, it does not know 



THE FORMING OF HABITS. 69 

how to eat; until it can read and write without 
having to spell each word that is now on the paper 
or that it wishes to put there, it knows how neither 
to read nor to write. "When the child or the youth 
or the man does what he has to do without even 
thinking that he is duing it till his attention is called 
to it, then he knows that particular thing ; it takes 
its place among the number of his habits. 

In the beginning each one of these new auto- 
matic actions was difficult, distasteful ; there was a 
disinclination to attempt it which had to be over- 
come by some reward. There is a celebrated French 
picture of a great room in the royal palace where 
the young heir to the throne is being taught to walk. 
The little fellow is encircled by a crowd of courtiers 
encouraging him to make the attempt in spite of 
the risk, but the arguments that are most influen- 
tial on the royal heart are the ribbons and decora- 
tions that the officers take from their own breasts 
and hold out toward the prince. Then he walks. 
So you took your first steps because you wanted 
something — your father's watch or your grandfa- 
thers cane. You began to read and write for hope 
of a sugar-plum or for fear of a whip. But, what- 
ever was the original cause of the action, it left 
its mark on brain and muscle. It opened up ducts 
and channels that did not exist before, and along 
these very soon currents flowed so silentlv and 
smoothlv that vou were scarcely conscious of them. 

An old soldier crossing the parade-ground one 



70 BEGINNING LIFE. 

day, carrying in both hands a large bowl of soup 
for his dinner, suddenly heard the ringing com- 
mand, "Attention !" and, instantly dropping his 
dinner, he stood erect with hands by his side, while 
his friends who had played this practical joke upon 
him chuckled delightedly over the success of it. 
Long years ago the soldier had been so thoroughly 
drilled in obedience to that command that when 
the ear heard the word the order went so swiftly 
along the well-worn track to the muscle and nerve 
that there was no time for the judgment to give 
any opinion whatever in the matter. 

It is perfectly true of all mankind, as Paley says, 
that "they act more from habit than reflection/' 
You became very angry in a moment yesterday. 
It was wholly unexpected. You were as intent as 
the old soldier upon something you were doing, 
when some evil spirit shouted its command, " Fire !" 
and you dropped everything to discharge an almost 
fatal load straight at the heart — perhaps of your 
best friend. You were possibly not very much 
more to blame for that particular act than the old 
soldier was for dropping his dinner, but you were 
to blame for forming the habit of obedience to such 
evil passions. You were profane yesterday, to your 
own disgust and that of your friends. You had 
no expectation of swearing — you had determined 
that you would not — but the evil spirit uttered its 
harsh command, and oaths flew from your mouth 
like stones from a catapult. You told a lie yes- 



THE FORMING OF HABITS. 71 

terday — the first for many days, and the one just 
before it was to have been your last. It was not 
premeditated : you were entrapped into it as the 
old soldier was into his mistake. Some evil spirit 
too often obeyed aforetime gave the command, and 
you did what a moment afterward you were angry 
at yourself for having done. You made a dishon- 
est bargain yesterday, and the money burns now in 
your purse. You thought you never would do it 
again ; it seemed to you that there was not money 
enough in the United States to tempt you to get 
any of it wrongfully. But there was, alas ! It 
was only a few dollars that you got, but the old 
enemy and master told you to take them, and it 
was done before you had time to think. The old 
soldier only lost his dinner by his involuntary act, 
but you have lost the respect of your fellow-men 
and your self-respect and the bright hope you had 
a little while as;o that vou were to be henceforth a 
free man. 

We have all formed the habit of giving atten- 
tion to voices that should be unheard. One would 
need to speak to an audience of infants in arms 
who should wish to address those who had formed 
no bad habits, and even then it would be too 
late. TTe may take it for granted, as the apostle 
does, that the question is not so much of the form- 
ing as of the changing of habits. Paul is very 
outspoken to his friends in Rome concerning some 
of the bad ways into which they have fallen, but 



72 BEGINNING LIFE. 

he doesn't consider their condition hopeless. These 
bad habits, he says, may be overcome by good ones. 
He has very little faith in any efforts they may 
make simply to give up doing wrong and break 
away from old bad habits, but he has great faith 
in a determination, with trust in God, to do right, 
and in the forming of new good habits. It doesn't 
do much good to tear up weeds and leave the ground 
fallow : it must be sown with grass or grain, and 
this will fight the weeds and run them out. Tear 
up your degrading habits, says the apostle, and sow 
the empty heart with the good seed. You will 
cease to obey the devil's " Attention !" when you 
accustom yourself to obey God's "Be not over- 
come of evil, but overcome evil with good." 

Is it possible? Was Aristotle right or was he 
dreaming when he thought that a good habit may 
become such a second nature as to cause no self-de- 
nial? We may move firmly here, for the solid 
ground of experience is still under our feet. You 
have formed some good habits ; you are as sure of 
these as of your bad habits. It is easier for you to 
do right in some directions than it is to do wrong. 
You could say the multiplication table correctly 
in half the time you could give false results to five 
times six or seven times nine. You speak fairly 
good grammar with greater ease than you speak bad 
grammar. You would have to think to make a 
mistake, and you do not have to think to make a 
correct sentence. It makes itself; habit does it. It is 



THE FORMING OF HABITS. 73 

easier for you ordinarily to tell the truth than it is 
to do anything else. The channels in your brain are 
straight, and not spiral. You have got in the habit 
of seeing things as they are, and of reporting cor- 
rectly what you see. The shuttles of your brain 
have become accustomed to weaving a fabric of that 
particular kind ; it would need a change almost as 
organic as that of putting in new machinery for it 
to weave lies instead of truths. A musician like 
Von Bulow or Rubinstein or Hoffman sits at the 
piano when the twilight has so deepened that your 
eyes cannot distinguish the black keys from the 
white, and for hours he dreams in melodies, and 
his fingers find in the dark all the strange combina- 
tions of notes needed to make these dreams audible 
to your ear. It is all very marvelous, and perfectly 
natural. Give the musician a pencil and ask him 
to sketch, or a chisel and ask him to carve, and his 
movements are awkward and the results ludicrous. 
New machinery must be created for the new w T ork. 
It is impossible in a day or a week to make the 
shuttles that wove harmonv, weave outlines and 
forms. We hear of orators like Burke and Webster 
and Bright — for whom the English-speaking world 
still weeps — needing only a great occasion to throw 
the shuttle, when a magnificent oration was woven 
with as little effort, apparently, as that with which 
a loom weaves a carpet, and we are amazed. We 
forget the years it took to construct the machinery 
for that particular work; we forget that all the 



74 BEGINNING LIFE. 

energies of their lives were concentrated upon the 
production of just those results, and that, therefore, 
when the hour struck, they had only to release their 
pent-up energies and the currents were bound to 
flow along the prepared channels. It was genius 
back of it all, but it was the oratorical habit that 
made the production of such orations possible. 

And when we hear of men, or see them, that 
cannot or will not lie, of men who would not by a 
sign seem to yield assent to an untruth, who found 
it easier and preferable for them to be thrown to 
the lions, or to be smeared with oil and bound to a 
stake in Nero's garden for a living torch, or to have 
their mouths filled with powder ready to be touched at 
a signal with a flaming spark, we know that these are 
men who have persistently cut such grooves in brain 
and heart and muscle that for them to do anything else 
than to die for the truth would be most difficult and 
unnatural. It has so long been their habit to speak 
the true thing and to do the right thing, irrespect- 
ive of consequences, that you need not expect them 
to do anything else because an emperor or a pope or 
a party commands or entreats something different. 

Every choice results in a discharge of energy, 
and every such discharge breaks channels or deep- 
ens those already broken in brain and heart and 
muscle. So the best physiologists and psychologists 
are coming to speak as seriously of the momentous 
importance of little things — of insignificant trifles, 
as we are tempted to call them — as did the Puritan 



THE FORMING OF HABITS. 75 

theologians themselves. It is scientifically certain, 
they say, that repeated action of any sort tends to 
make channels out of which it is as difficult for 
the vital stream to lift itself as for a river to for- 
sake its well-worn bed. Whichever way we turn — 
toward the evil or the good — w r e see that Aristotle 
was right. A man has formed a good habit when 
it causes no self-denial, and the wise man will 
enrich his life with such habits; and when others 
have already been formed, he will replace them, 
by a process similar to that which created them, 
by habits of the right sort. He will follow Paul's 
advice to the very letter : he will fight fire with fire, 
the evil with good. He will no longer serve the 
devil because now he serves God. 

There are four habits whose desirability is so self- 
evident that they may be very heartily commended to 
all young people especially — the habits of industry, 
church-attendance, Bible-reading and prayer. Paul 
condenses them all in his rapid sentence : " Diligent 
in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord/' 
The love of work for its own sake is among the 
rarest of all affections. It may be doubted whether 
it is ever innate. It is so delightful to enjoy one's 
self that it needs in almost every instance some 
pressure from the outside to give us a more serious 
view of life; yet in a world like this it is impos- 
sible for us to do anything of real value for our- 
selves or others till in some way we have gotten 
rid of this distaste for work. We are most of us, 



76 BEGINNING LIFE. 

very probably, hard workers ; but if it be from ne- 
cessity, and not from choice, we are not industrious : 
we are only obedient to the lash. The moment it 
ceases to snap we drop into a seat with folded hands 
and a sigh of relief. Reconstruct your ideas on this 
subject; do some honest thinking about it. See if 
it is possible for you to imagine God sending a being 
so richly endowed as every human creature is into 
a world where so much needs to be done with the 
intention that such an individuality should spend 
a whole lifetime here in doing nothing. Once be- 
lieve that God wants you to be industrious, and 
you will have a motive for beginning to work, and 
for keeping at it till it will become a second nature 
and no longer cause you self-denial. 

As for church-attendance, you do go once in a 
while when you hear of anything specially attractive 
or when you feel particularly like it, or even when 
you don't, if you have some one to go with. You 
are what has been called " a regular but not inde- 
fatigable church-attendant." There are many such 
to keep you from feeling either shame or loneliness, 
and possibly to keep you from estimating the habit 
of church-attendance at its true value. A man may, 
it is true, go to church regularly all his life and not 
be much of a man after all, as a man may eat three 
meals regularly every day and still be but an in- 
different specimen of physical development ; but 
in neither case can you lay the blame upon the 
thing the man does. Had he digested his food as 



THE FORMING OF HABITS. 77 

other men do, had he taken the nourishment from the 
church that other men have done, the results would 
have been different. Reconstruct your ideas on this 
subject also. See if it is possible for you to imagine 
God instituting his Church, commanding his people 
to become members of it and not to neglect the as- 
sembling of themselves tog-ether to offer him wor- 
ship, and to receive instructions from him through 
his servants, without believing that here is a God- 
ordained duty, where you have been accustomed to 
see a man-created privilege of which you did not 
frequently care to avail yourself. Believe, as you 
will if you study the question honestly, that God 
wants you to be a member in, and a regular attend- 
ant of, his Church, and you will have a motive for 
beginning such attendance, and for continuing it till 
it too will become a second nature and no longer 
cause you self-denial. 

You have read the Bible through — or, at least, 
the New Testament. It is a book you would heartily 
commend. You would be glad to lend your copy 
to a friend at any time without hurrying him to re- 
turn it. You know a good many biblical conun- 
drums and something in a general way of the book 
as a whole. But you do not read it anything like as 
regularly as you read your newspaper or your novel. 
Your superficial familiarity with it deludes you into 
thinking you know it well enough now. If a new 
Epistle should be discovered written by Paul or James 
or Peter, you would read it at once. So you are 



78 BEGINNING LIFE. 

half unconsciously placing the book which you really 
believe to be the word of God on a level with the 
other books that lie on your table, which are read 
once or twice and then opened no more. The pur- 
pose of reading a revelation from God, we can see 
at a glance, must be different. Here are our sailing- 
orders, the chart by which we are to steer, directions 
complete and minute for our conduct by the way. 
It is impossible for us to be too familiar with all this. 
If we knew it by heart, it would be of unspeakable 
advantage to us. That we ought to consult it as 
habitually as the ship's captain does the sun, and 
for the same reason, is indisputable. Select your 
own time — morning and evening will probably be 
best — and read this book as regularly as the sun 
rises and sets. It will not be long before the habit 
will be formed, and to act in accordance with it will 
cause you no self-denial. 

Prayer is a much more universal act than the read- 
ing of the Bible. Men pray to God who have never 
even heard of his revealed word ; men pray to him 
who can't read it, and who will not read it. They 
pray as children cry in the night. They are in fear 
or pain, and the call for help will at least do no 
harm. You have all prayed many times; but if 
you should pray many times more in the same way, 
still it could not be said of you — perhaps you would 
not wish that it should — that you had the habit of 
prayer. Neither would it be quite true to say that 
they are in the habit of praying who are merely in 



THE FORMING OF HABITS. 79 

the habit of saying their prayers. Great criminals 
have confessed that in a long life of open lawlessness 
they had never neglected once or twice a day to count 
their beads and mutter a Paternoster, or to kneel 
and say their prayers in the Protestant manner, but 
that in all this simulation of prayer there was any 
real yearning for God and godliness it is impossible 
to believe. The habit we wish to form is not that 
of saying certain words at a certain time in a certain 
position, but it is the habit of expressing gratitude 
to God for the things he gives us, and of asking for 
other things we think w r e need ; it is the habit of 
going to God confidently as in childhood you w r ent 
to your father or to some wise friend. Such a habit 
is a greater protection than are hosts of good reso- 
lutions or w r atchful friends. Such a habit will do 
more to ensure a triumphant life than any other it 
is possible to mention. 

Be not overcome of evil. We shall be if we 
go out jauntily or carelessly to meet it, or if we go 
conceitedly and contemptuously, as Braddock w T ent 
to fight the Indians. We must go sobered by the 
certainty of danger and of defeat if we are off our 
guard or do not make the best use of the material 
w T e have at hand. We must go believing that there 
is but one way of overcoming evil, and determined 
to use that way so persistently that the recognition 
of any bad habit we may consciously or unconsciously 
have formed shall be the signal for concentrated ef- 
fort to replace it with one that is good. 



VI. 

PERPETUAL YOUTH, 



VI. 

PERPETUAL YOUTH. 

"And entering into the sepulchre they saw a young man sit- 
ting on the right side clothed in a long white garment." — Makk 
xvi. 5. 

THE fountain of perpetual youth, for the Chris- 
tian, is the grave. They who have followed 
Christ on this side, are to be on the other as the 
angels of heaven, and this angelic form that startled 
the women who hurried to the sepulchre was straight 
and lithe and young, in the " bloom of a life that 
knows no decay." This "young man," as Mark 
calls the divine messenger, may have been one of 
those the patriarch Jacob saw as he slept on his 
pillow of stone at Bethel and beheld the ladder that 
reached from earth to heaven, thronged with angels. 
He may have been one of the two that grasped Lot 
by the hand as he lingered in Sodom and entreated 
him to flee to the mountain lest he should be con- 
sumed, or he may have been a mortal, tempted and 
tried like ourselves, but who, conquering at last, as 
we may, was clothed in white, as all who overcome 
shall be. An old man perhaps he was when he 
plunged into the river of death, but in that strange 
bath his youth was renewed. 

83 



84 BEGINNING LIFE. 

We draw back from old age as from the grave 
itself. They seem to be removed from each other 
but by a single step. We dread the undignified ex- 
posure of human weakness from which but few of the 
aged can hope to escape with almost the same inten- 
sity with which we recoil from the pitiless revelations 
of the grave, but to be unclothed by age and death is 
for the Christian to be clothed upon with garments 
of white and with perpetual youth. The youth we 
have here is only a poor imitation of that we may 
have there. It is like a snow statue after one of 
Michael Angelo's designs. The slightest touch seems 
to take something from it. You turn your head 
away for a moment and look back, and you can see 
the ravages that time has already made upon it. 
What is so transitory, so evanescent, so illusive, as 
youth? As long as it is yours you are unconscious 
of it; and when you begin to congratulate yourself 
on its possession, already your friends are saying, 
" How old you look !" and that was your thought 
about them, though they were born a year or so 
later than you. The younger children in the home 
are always pushing the older ones on into society or 
business, as one season jostles another forward. 
Each class in school or in college is eager to thrust 
the one above it into the university or into the world. 
Youth is gone almost ere one can say it lightens. 
" I once w r as young," says David ; and we must be 
very quick indeed if we would not be obliged to put 
all we say about our youth in the past tense. 



PERPETUAL YOUTH. 85 

But in that laud from which the young man who 
sat in the sepulchre came we are to be given , so he 
seems silently to assure us, by Him who has con- 
quered death for himself and his own, an aeon of 
years to be young in. We are to feel through long 
unending centuries an exulting sense of bodily 
strength. We have just enough of it here to know 
what it means. For a few hours each day we may 
sniif the battle afar off, with eager desire to be in 
the hottest part of it, and then this imperfect instru- 
ment of our wills must be reinvigorated and repaired 
by food and sleep. As walking is simply a perpetual 
falling and catching of one's self before the act is 
quite completed, so life, even of the youngest and 
strongest, is a constant wearing out and renewal in 
the repair-shops of the dining-room and the sleep- 
ing-chamber, till more radical measures are required 
and the doctor is called in. What a poor imitation 
all this is of the youth that awaits us just beyond 
the grave ! " They shall hunger no more, neither 
thirst any more." There will be no necessity to re- 
pair with food the wasted strength of that body. 
" There is no night there." They have no need of 
long hours for rest and restoration. This body 
sown in weakness is to be raised in power. The 
energy in it is to be so full and abounding that re- 
newal would be as superfluous as the renewal of the 
life that has gone pulsing through the universe with 
undiminished vigor from the beginning until now. 
The bloom of its life is to know no decay. 



8G BEGINNING LIFE. 

This perfect body is to find itself, as these im- 
perfect bodies of ours never have found themselves 
in this unharmonic world, in a perfect environment. 
There will be absolutely no friction. And why 
should not one be perpetually young in such circum- 
stances ? The tasks appointed for this perfect instru- 
ment will be wholly congenial. Have you ever 
found them altogether so here ? Has there not al- 
ways been some undesirable element in quantity or in 
quality. The work you thought exactly what you 
wanted, proved to be something quite different, after 
you had undertaken it. You deceived yourself for 
a little while by enforced self-congratulation that 
this was exactly what you wished for, but at last 
you were compelled to move over to safer and sol- 
ider ground, and to acknowledge that it was a duty 
to be performed in spite of certain irremediable 
unpleasantnesses. It is not the work itself that 
wears us out and ages us, but the unadaptedness 
of it, the heat and irritation gendered by it. Why 
should not they who have nothing to do but to 
carry out a will with which their own is in perfect 
harmony keep their youth unbroken ? There is no 
inward recoil from the tasks assigned them, and 
there is no outward opposition. Whatever retards 
and sets itself up as a stumbling-block in the on- 
ward march of truth and righteousness has been 
left on this side the river. There are no difficul- 
ties there to be overcome, no obstacles to be sur- 
mounted, no seductions to be resisted, no assaults 



PERPETUAL YOUTH. 87 

to be repelled. How could one grow old in such 
surroundings ? 

Theirs is the freshness of an enduring youth ; 
the sparkle of the wine abides. Many a time 
have we stood 

" Like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
He stared at the Pacific, and all his men 
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise, 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien ;" 

but when we descended into the plains beneath and 
sought the gold whose glistening ingots we were 
sure we saw from the heights above, we found that 
the light had been flung back from rocks of quartz 
and shales of mica. The forests that from the hill- 
tops looked like Elysian groves in whose cool glades 
one might walk unwearied for ever, proved to be, as 
we tried to enter them, dank jungles, impenetrable 
morasses. Wild beasts were there, and serpents, 
and fevers more deadly still. It is a land of illu- 
sions, this earth on which we dwell, and every year 
takes many of them from us, and with them goes 
the sparkle and zest of life. The time is very short 
in which any mortal, however favorably placed, 
can be embarrassed by the wealth of pleasures that 
offer themselves. A few years are quite sufficient 
to try them all, and the larger part of life remains 
to be wasted in vain advertising for some new grati- 
fication. Why should not they be perpetually young 
who are constantly finding every cup which they lift 



88 BEGINNING LIFE. 

to their lips far sweeter than their anticipations? 
How can they grow old whose ever-renewed expe- 
riences compel them to say, "Satisfied! satisfied !" 
even more often than our experiences here compel us 
to say, " Vanity of vanities " ? " The oldest angels," 
some one says, "are the youngest." Why not? 
They are the ones who have been most often satis- 
fied. They are the ones who can begin each new 
task with greatest zest, and they have had the 
largest experience of the restful delights of the 
service on which they are entering. 

Theirs is the trustfulness of youth. It is quickly 
lost here. It withers under the cold winds that 
sweep across this earth as flowers wither touched 
by frost. There are vast moral distances between 
the child that believes in everybody and the man 
who believes in nobody, but in time the distance 
may be small that lies between. Confidence is an 
exotic ; we find here but little congenial soil for it. 
The ground is littered too deep with insincerities 
and infidelities and hypocrisies for any such growth 
to take root of itself. In the home it is indigenous, 
in the school it is thrifty and strong, but in the 
market-place and the forum it droops, and if not 
nurtured with greatest care speedily dies. This 
world offers an abundance of splendid soil for cyn- 
icism, for misanthropy, for misogamy. Such seed 
will take root almost anywhere and grow like a 
gourd in the tropics. We have each of us a thriv- 
ing little crop of our own of these things. It is a 



PERPETUAL YOUTH. 89 

crop easily sown and raised, but the reaping of it 
is a sad enough occupation — so sad that before it 
is half gathered many a man has given up alto- 
gether in despair. Woe to you if you are sowing 
such a crop for yourself, if you are so false to your- 
self that you cannot believe in the truth of any 
one else ! Woe to you if you are sowing such a 
crop for others, if through your deceit and insin- 
cerity they who once believed are coming to doubt ! 
Woe to you if you are taking from any human soul 
the faith it once had in purity and truth, in virtue 
and goodness, in man and God ! It must needs be 
that offences come, but woe to him by whom the 
offence cometh ! 

Though the lost faith of your childhood may 
have returned to you enriched and deepened since 
you began to believe in Jesus Christ, though you 
have learned to know him and are perfectly confi- 
dent that no word of his can ever be too implicit- 
ly trusted, yet you are on your guard still against 
your fellow-men. That form of the child's faith 
has gone from you irrevocably. It was frittered 
away by petty little deceits, or it was swept away 
by some great cruel treachery. You can never 
again trust your fellow-men as you once did. Not, 
it is true, in a world where even apostles could be- 
tray and deny their Lord, but that trust shall come 
back to you in that land from which the young 
man of the sepulchre came. Confidence is in the 
air there as doubt is in the air here. All souls, as 



90 BEGINNING LIFE. 

well as all garments, there are white. The lan- 
guage of heaven is not a medium for the conceal- 
ment of thought, like the language of earth. It may 
be that there is no language there — that thoughts are 
seen by the pure eyes of the pure in heart. One 
glance into souls as clear as crystal will be all that 
faith will ask to leap at once into vigorous life. 
Why should not they have perpetual youth whose 
souls are clean, and who see everywhere only clean 
souls around them ? 

These children in the Father's house trust one 
another with open eyes now as once in early child- 
hood upon the earth they trusted one another blindly. 
They trust the Father, too, with the old-time confi- 
dence of their earliest days in earthly parents, but 
now it is an enlightened and a reasonable confidence. 
It was well enough for us all as children to believe 
that our fathers knew everything and could do 
everything. Any other feeling about them would 
have been unnatural. It was a memorable day of 
great unhappiness when this faith was shaken and 
we began to have doubts, ending at last in the cer- 
tainty that there were many things they did not 
know and could not do. To be in a home again 
with that old trust back in the heart, and having a 
right to stay there for ever, would be almost enough 
in itself to make us feel young once more. 

They trust him to tell them all they need to know. 
There is no hurry. Eternity is around them. The 
tree of knowledge is above them ; its fruit, luscious 



PERPETUAL YOUTH. 91 

and ripe, falls into their opened hands. They are 
coming to know as they are known. Mysteries are 
being explained in the clear, strong light, as the 
weird shapes of the night take on familiar forms 
when the sun rises above the hills. Cycle upon 
cycle may pass and some questions may still be un- 
answered, but they are not impatient as we are in 
this " troublous land of time and dreams." They 
are entranced by the ever-changing panorama of 
resolved perplexities that passes before them. Why 
should not they grow young who are coming to un- 
derstand all mysteries ? 

They trust Him to give them all they ought to 
have. Stars differ from one another in glory. Some 
who have been last here are first there, but they see 
the reason for it, as we cannot for the lifting up of 
one and the casting down of another here. We are 
never quite satisfied with what comes to us on this 
side of the grave. If it is not what we asked for, 
we wonder why ; and if it is what we asked for, we 
wonder that we had not asked for more. Not even 
the man who said he had learned in whatsoever 
state he was, therewith to be content, had everything 
he wanted. He wished to be free from pain, and the 
thorn yet hung in his flesh. He wished to be free 
from Roman fetters and prisons, and he was thrust 
down into a dark dungeon under the pavement. But 
there contentment is swallowed up in satisfaction. 
" More than they could ask or think " is flowing 
in upon them along every channel. The hunger 



92 BEGINNING LIFE. 

and the thirst of the entire nature is disappearing 
for ever. Why should not they be young who are 
harassed by no wants? 

They trust him to make them all they wish to be. 
From the first entering upon that land all ambition 
to be chiefest vanished they knew not how. They 
found some such prayer upon their lips as that of an 
humble saint who cries, as he looks toward that day, 

" I have but thee, O Father ! Let thy Spirit 
Be with me, then, to comfort and uphold. 
No gate of pearl, no branch of palm, I merit, 
Nor street of shining gold. 

" Some humble door among thy many mansions, 

Some sheltering shade where sin and striving cease, 
And flows for ever, through heaven's green expansions, 
The river of thy peace. 

" There, from the music round about me stealing, 
I fain would learn the new and holy song, 
And find, at last, beneath thy trees of healing, 
That life for which I long." 

They have begun to see now, as they could not, as 
w r e cannot, here, how creatures who have been so 
unlike their own ideals can be transformed into his 
perfect likeness. As they feel the w r ork moving on 
in them they are satisfied to stand still and see the 
salvation of their Lord. Why should not they be 
young who have already looked upon that which 
they are to be? 

Theirs, too, is the joyfulness of youth — not the 



PERPETUAL YOUTH. 93 

unthinking and baseless joy of the very young who 
are light-hearted because they are light-headed, who 
laugh and sing because they are ignorant of the 
dangers around them, and whose gladness might be 
driven away by a single sober, sensible thought ; but 
theirs is the joy of those who have seen danger and 
have faced it down, who have met enemies and 
have conquered them. It is the joy of those who 
have fought the good fight and have finished their 
course and have kept the faith and have received 
the crown. Their work is done. All that element 
of uncertainty that kept them restlessly alert here 
has for ever been removed. The race is run, and they 
have won the prize ; the battle is ended, and they 
are victors. Why should youth not flow back into 
hearts that know such joy as that ? 

Theirs is the gladness, too, of those who have been 
permitted to see with Christ the travail of his soul 
and are satisfied. They have looked, as he has 
lifted the curtain for them, down through the ages 
of time that still remain to the end of all things, and 
as they see the glorious consummation of their Lord's 
work, as they watch his enemies and those who were 
eager to sink his name into bottomless oblivion 
coming eagerly to him with their gifts of gold and 
frankincense and myrrh, as they behold men of 
every color and of every tongue bowing before him 
with every expression of grateful love, kings and 
philosophers side by side with the most lowly and 
the most ignorant, how can they help joining in the 



94 BEGINNING LIFE. 

new and holy song, " Worthy is the Lamb that was 
slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and 
strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing " ? 
How can they ever grow old whose hearts are 
thrilled with the joy of that song? 

The oldest person here to-night, looking back, 
feels that it was but yesterday and he was young, 
and the youngest person here will be old in a little 
space of time — as it were, a day. Soon the head 
will be whitened : " The almond tree shall flourish." 
The eye will be dimmed : " Those that look out 
of the windows shall be darkened." The hands 
shall shake and the feet shall falter : " The keepers 
of the house shall tremble, and the grasshopper shall 
be a burden, and desire shall fail." And what then ? 
Must we be dragged on, caught in an endless chain, 
to weakness, old age and death ? Or may we so use 
our youth as to have within us the assurance that 
it may become perpetual ? Are there not limits, 
prophecies, of it, that like the angel of the sepulchre 
give us hope, as we look into their faces, that we 
shall for ever be young ? Are there not potent 
qualities that even here seem to renew the youth of 
those who have grown old ? At thirty-four, James 
Watt, the inventor of the steam-engine, was an old 
man. " I greatly doubt if the silent mansion of the 
dead is not the happiest place," he wrote. At eighty, 
two young men found a day spent in his company 
among the most amusing and instructive, so one of 
them savs, of his whole life. What was it that 



PERPETUAL YOUTH. 95 

changed the old-young man into a young-old man ? 
It was not good health or good luck, for his health 
never was very good and he had his full share of 
bereavement and disappointment, but it was a new 
way of looking at life. He had come to see that he 
might give over living for himself — a way of living 
that had almost burned up his energies before his 
days were half finished — and that he might begin 
to live for God and for the help of humanity. It 
was that new purpose that gave him back the zest 
and confidence and joy he had wellnigh lost. Will 
you live for yourself and be old in body and soul 
while you are yet young in years ? or will you live 
for God and for the good that you can do, and like 
James Watt be young in body and in soul long after 
the first page of the old family Bible has proved in 
black and white that you are very aged indeed ? 
"Will you waste your youth in a giddy round of 
sensuous pleasures till you drop into a jejune and 
hopeless old age with no future to look forward 
to in time or in eternity ? or will you use your youth 
so wisely as to be young still when old age comes, 
and with such vital germs within you that you shall 
rise out of the grave clothed upon, like the messenger 
whom the Marys saw at the empty sepulchre on 
that Easter morning, with white raiment and per- 
petual youth ? 



VII. 

TEMPTATION. 



VII. 

TEMPTATION. 

" Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God ; 
for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any 
man : but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his 
own lust and enticed." — James i. 13, 14. 

TEMPTATION proves that we are neither an- 
gels nor devils. If we were altogether good 
or bad, the word would have no meaning for us. 
We should move straight forward then into the 
ever-deepening light or darkness, with no allurement 
to turn aside. That we can be tempted we must 
consider rather as hopeful than discouraging. We 
none of us lose any supposed honor by the assur- 
ance that we are not perfect, and the discouraged 
and despairing may gain much by the certainty 
that they are still capable of an exclusively human 
experience. 

Temptation itself is not more natural to man than 
the offering of excuses for having yielded to it. It 
w r as exceedingly easy for a Greek or a Roman to 
release himself from all responsibility of an un- 
popular or shameful act. He had only to say, if 
caught stealing, " My god Mercury enticed me ;" or 
if discovered intoxicated, " My god Bacchus allured 

99 



100 BEGINNING LIFE. 

me to drink ;" or if found beating out his enemy's 
life, " My god Mars made me do it ;" but a Chris- 
tian — one of the apostles of Jesus Christ — pricks 
with his pen this consoling theory of a false theol- 
ogy. " Don't deceive yourself in that way/' James 
says. Don't flatter yourself that a god had any 
part in the meanness of which you are accused. 
The only god there is in this universe is good. 
"Let no man say" — be he Greek, Roman or Hebrew 
— " when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for 
God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth 
he any man : but every man is tempted, when he is 
drawn away of his own lust and enticed." 

When you do wrong, there is one person to blame 
for it, and that is the one who does the wrong. 
It is not denied that other people or other things 
may have been the occasion of it, but these out- 
ward enticements, however attractive, would have 
been impotent had not your consent been given. 
We say we are tempted by our senses. We try — 
half unconsciously, perhaps — to make the eye or the 
ear do duty as scapegoat, as the Greeks once made 
scapegoats of their gods. But the eye and the ear 
only carry impressions to the soul, and they are 
no more to blame for what follows the deliv- 
ery of their message than is the messenger-boy 
for what you may do after you read the telegram 
he hands you. Every man is tempted — not when 
he is drawn away of his eyes or of his ears, but 
of his lusts. Two pair of eyes look at the same 



TEMPTATION. 101 

object ; and if you could photograph the impressions 
made on those four optic nerves, the pictures might 
be almost identical, but the results upon those two 
lives were very different. One of these pairs of eyes 
belonged to a drover just in from the Far West, 
and the other belonged to his daughter ; and the 
object they saw was a jewel in a shop-window. 
They both saw it, but the cattleman's heart made 
no response — he wouldn't give the poorest colt on 
his farm for it — but that girl there by his side has 
had some education. She has read about courts 
and about crown-jewels. She knows that that 
sparkling thing is a diamond, like those worn 
}>y empresses. It is a small one, to be sure, that 
no empress of good standing would want, but this 
little lady thinks she never saw anything so beau- 
tiful ; her heart is in her throat as she looks at it. 
She is really tempted to break the tenth com- 
mandment in a way she could not even explain to 
her father. They go down the street, and hear on 
the next corner sounds coming out intermittently as 
a door swings to and fro — snatches of songs, bois- 
terous laughter and the clicking of glasses. They 
both hear them. The father stops as if fascinated, 
but the daughter clutches his hand and tries to 
drag him by. It was not the jewel that tempted 
the daughter nor the dram-shop the father : it was 
something within them that leaped up as traitors 
will when the signal is given and the time seems 
to have come to betray the fortress. 



102 BEGINNING LIFE. 

This is why it is that, while we all live in the 
same world and see, many of us, the same things, 
no two human beings ever have exactly the same 
temptations. There is nothing in any of our senses, 
there is nothing in the surroundings of any of us, 
business, professional, social, that makes sin neces- 
sary. When we are drawn away, it is by our own 
lusts to which we have given assent. That some 
sights and sounds and places are more dangerous 
than others is altogether unquestionable. What 
these are for us is one of the things that we ought 
all to know about ourselves. Perhaps there is as 
little common sense used in resisting temptation as 
in any other phase of human life whatsoever. We 
learn, for the most part after a few trials, that we 
are better off physically if we avoid some things 
and secure others. If we find we can't get along 
well without eight hours' sleep, we make an effort 
to sleep eight hours ; if we find that there are dain- 
ties we cannot eat without resulting discomfort, we 
refuse them, however delicious they may be to the 
taste ; but we seem to lose our heads when we get 
on to higher ground where the questions to be de- 
cided have to do more directly with our moral than 
with our physical well-being. The process up to a 
certain point is the same as that with which we are 
familiar. There is the effort to assimilate some par- 
ticularly delicious indulgence, repeated more than 
once, with a never-failing moral and spiritual dis- 
comfort resulting, but there the resemblance ceases. 



TEMPTATION. 103 

We do not avoid these things as we do for the most 
part those that express themselves in physical terms. 
We are as stupid about it as if we had no moral 
memories whatever. A man knows that if he 
exposes himself at certain times and in certain 
atmospheric conditions his system will be unable 
to resist, and he knows with the same degree of 
certainty that if he exposes himself to unfavorable 
moral and spiritual conditions he will undoubtedly 
succumb ; but he does it, not only once or twice : 
he keeps on doing it. He deliberately embarks in 
a business that from the very nature of it repro- 
duces constantly these unfortunate conditions. He 
associates himself with men in whose society he 
finds these conditions are never absent. He reads 
books in every line of which lurks moral malaria. 
He chooses his home in a place that makes escape 
doubly difficult, and after he has done everything 
that one could think of to dig pitfalls for him- 
self he tumbles into them, and says, " I am not 
to blame. No one could have escaped under these 
circumstances." Yet these men in their self-con- 
structed pitfalls serve at least one purpose, if no 
other — that of a warning to the young not to throw 
overboard common sense when they know that just 
ahead are the rocks where sirens sit and sing. Let 
them counsel you as the half-repentant Circe, daugh- 
ter of the Sun, counseled Ulysses so to prepare his 
ship by filling the ears of the sailors with wax and 
having himself bound to the mast that it might uot 



104 BEGINNING LIFE. 

be easy — nay, might be impossible — for them to 
yield to the seductive song. There are many en- 
chanted islands just ahead. To sail on thought- 
lessly till the music of those fascinating songs fills 
the air will be fatal. Make preparation for such 
moments. See to it that the ears and the hands 
are properly cared for. 

But Orpheus took even a better way than that 
of Ulysses. When he passed the same island of 
the sirens, he left his own hands unbound and the 
ears of his sailors unstopped, but he made sweeter 
music on his harp than that of the sirens, and he 
and all his men could smile at the vain efforts of 
their would-be destroyers. This is "the expulsive 
power/' as Chalmers calls it, "of a new affection." 
This is the common-sense and Christian way of 
resisting temptation. Let your tempted soul hear 
sweeter music than the sirens make if you would 
keep contentedly on your course. The majority 
of those who give themselves over to gross, sensu- 
ous lives do it as much because they know of noth- 
ing else that would be interesting to do as for any 
other reason. Could they have become engaged in 
any form of healthful activity, the power of the 
temptation over them would have been immeasu- 
rably diminished. 

The man who is hard at work, especially if it 
be in the kind of work he likes, will not often 
hear the song of the sirens ; and if he hears it, he 
will be too absorbed to give his attention to it. 



TEMPTATION. 105 

All young men and women ought to be regu- 
larly employed. If they do not need to work to 
keep soul and body together, they do need it to 
keep the soul clean and the body pure. If you 
are compelled to labor to earn a living, do not look 
upon it as a curse : God may have seen that it was 
the only way to save you from the curse of sin. If 
you have nothing to do, look for work at once; 
there is an abundance of it to be found if you do 
not care for pecuniary remuneration. There is work 
to be done in getting work for those who cannot 
live without it. There is work to be done for those 
who are suffering because they are too old or too 
young or too weak to work. There is work to 
be done in visiting the sick and those who are in 
prison — work in teaching the ignorant and in re- 
forming the vicious, in clothing the naked and feed- 
ing the hungry, in giving comfort to the sorrowing 
and courage to the hopeless. Don't say, a That 
sort of work is for ministers and priests and sisters 
of charity." So it is, but not for them exclusively. 
So far as we know, there was not a single represen- 
tative of any of these classes in that company to 
whom Christ said, " I was an hungered, and ye 
gave me no meat ; I was thirsty, and ye gave me 
no drink ; I was a stranger, and ye took me not 
in ; naked, and ye clothed me not ; sick and in 
prison, and ye visited me not." 

Learn as well to make a proper use of the pure, 
ennobling pleasures of life. Let their sweet songs 



106 BEGINNING LIFE. 

drown the seductive songs of the sirens. Train 
yourself to admire and enjoy a beautiful sunset 
or a still more beautiful sunrise. Let the eye be 
refined in its tastes till a field of ripening grain, a 
long slope of green grass, a river winding through 
a valley, a blossoming orchard, a snow-clad moun- 
tain, a stretch of blue sea, shall give a keener sense 
of enjoyment than the garish splendors of halls 
devoted to sensuous delights. Learn to admire 
and enjoy the best there is in art. The world's 
masterpieces for the most part are on the other side 
of the sea, but these are by no means necessary 
for the development of the artistic sense. There 
are galleries of fairly good pictures open to us all 
here in our own city. An hour spent in one of 
them would be of more advantage to you than 
many hours spent in watching the changing scenes, 
too often contaminating, of the theatre or the opera- 
house. There is real art now in the illustrations 
of our best magazines, brought by free libraries 
within every one's reach. Learn to see and to feel 
the beauty there is in the simplest scenes well drawn 
or etched, and you have a source of pleasure that 
will neither vitiate nor satiate. 

Music may be even more helpful than pictures. 
It is cheaper. There is more variety and greater 
intensity in the pleasure it gives. If we are at all 
musical, we can carry our treasures with us every- 
where, and can bring them out by night as well as 
by day for the delectation of our friends and for 



TEMFTATION. 107 

our own gratification. To be able to play on an 
instrument, or to use that most noble of all instru- 
ments the human voice, is to be possessed of an 
unfailing source of the purest pleasure. Though 
there are comparatively few who can ever hope 
to play or to sing well enough to give gratification 
to really critical people, yet the w r orld does not 
exist altogether for the benefit of really critical 
people ; and if you can learn to play or sing or 
whistle a tune, you will have it in your power at 
any time to overwhelm the siren's song with safer 
and nobler melodies, even if they are not very artis- 
tically rendered. 

Literature offers quite as real a pleasure to even 
a larger number of people. Most musical amateurs 
spend more hours a day with their books than with 
their instruments or songs. Johnson thought the 
most miserable man in all the world "is he who 
cannot read on a rainy day." He might have 
enlarged the rainy day a little and made it include 
all odd and unoccupied moments. Probably the ma- 
jority of us have received more pleasure from books 
than from all other sources combined. Blessed are 
the young men and maidens who ask no keener 
delights than those they know are always awaiting 
them between the covers of a good book. If you 
do not care now for reading, set yourself as deter- 
minedly to acquire this taste as you would if you 
knew that on the last page of every worthy book 
you should read you would be certain of finding a 



108 BEGINNING LIFE. 

legal-tender bill of a large sum, so bewitched by 
book-loving fairies as not to be plucked by any 
possibility till every page is read. 

The actual rewards to those who read the whole of a 
good book are greater than any within the power of 
fairies to distribute. Not the least of these will be the 
independence you will thus achieve. Instead of being 
a hanger-on of every friend or acquaintance who 
can amuse you and save you for an hour or so from 
yourself, you will be absolutely free to seek society 
of any sort or to avoid it, as may seem desirable. 
You know you have better than the best to be found 
in modern drawing-rooms in your own little library, 
though there may be only a dozen books upon the 
shelf. Outranking even this priceless benefit will 
be the moral and spiritual gains you will have made. 
At the first notes of the siren's song you can fill the 
air with the sweetest music of the world's purest and 
most inspiring poets ; you can enchain the ear with 
the eloquence of the grandest orators that have ever 
lived ; you can entrance the eye with pageants that 
move across the page more brilliant and splendid 
than have ever marched across any Field of the 
Cloth of Gold. 

Thrice blessed are the young men and maidens to 
whom the Bible is the most interesting of books. 
An audience of colored people can be gathered any- 
where in the South, it is said, by an announcement 
that a number of chapters will be read from either 
the Old Testament or the New. They delight in 



TEMPTATION. 109 

the long musical roll of the Psalms, in the wide 
wondrous visions of the prophets, in the exquisite 
parables of Christ and in the cogent Epistles of Paul. 
Many of the greatest scholars here in the North and 
in England and Germany are of the same mind as 
the ignorant freedmen. To them, as to Sir Walter, 
this is " the Book." There is no other comparable to 
it. They would choose it unhesitatingly if they knew 
they were about to be cast away upon a lonely island, 
and could have but one book. A vast amount of 
intellectual error, often of a painful, and sometimes 
of a very dangerous, sort is altogether avoidable for 
those who are willing to be admonished by this book, 
and there is moral and spiritual life and health in it 
for the whole race. Blessed are they who when 
they are tempted are able at once to grasp the sword 
of the Spirit, which is some word of God, as Christ 
himself did. 

As Christ himself did ! It is only in the com- 
panionship of this Christ who met the tempter and 
conquered him for us that we can be absolutely 
secure against temptation. All the contentment we 
can find in our work, all the pleasure and inspira- 
tion we can get out of nature and art and music and 
literature, all the moral and spiritual strength that 
leap from this word as waters leap from a spring, 
will be of incalculable advantage in lessening the 
frequency and power of temptation ; but when it 
comes upon us and the storm breaks, then we must 
fly to this Lover of our souls. Our safety depends 



110 BEGINNING LIFE. 

very largely in our reliance upon his presence and 
help, and that reliance will be affected in no small 
degree by our ability to realize his constant nearness. 
There is a great difference in temperaments as to 
this power of seeing the invisible. There are some, 
like the old Greek philosopher, who can see good- 
ness incarnated, and who are entranced with the 
form of beauty outlined before them with a distinct- 
ness almost like that of a material presence ; there 
are Christians who seem to live in the conscious pres- 
ence of their Lord as really as did they who jour- 
neyed with him across "those sacred fields;" but 
there are others to whom all this is largely incom- 
prehensible. They believe in Christ as they do in 
goodness, but they have never seen either. They 
lose very much, much more perhaps than there is 
any need of their losing. If they would make a 
rational use of these four inspired pictures of the 
Christ, he would no longer be for them a Christ en- 
tombed in a garden or a Christ enthroned in heaven : 
he would be the Christ of his own promise, " with 
us always even unto the end," and to whom we can 
cry when we feel ourselves sinking, as Peter did, 
and there is time only for a cry, with perfect confi- 
dence that he will hear and answer our agonizing 
appeal as quickly as he did Peter's. 

The old mythology has passed away altogether. 
Men long ago ceased to believe in gods, impure them- 
selves and tempting mortals to vice. " God is God : 
there is none other," is the message that even the 



TEMPTATION. Ill 

Mohammedan shouts in the ears of Asiatic and Afri- 
can savages. He will not entice to sin ; he died to 
save the world from it. He lives for the same pur- 
pose. He does not see fit to remove us altogether 
from the sphere of temptation, but that need not 
disquiet us : "he will not suffer us to be tempted above 
that we are able, but will with the temptation also 
make a way to escape." Never permit yourself to 
believe or to be persuaded that temptation, in what- 
ever form it comes, is irresistible. It is for all of 
us if we stand alone, but for none of us who have 
" the right man on our side, the man of God's own 
choosing." 



VIII. 

MAKING A HOfljfE. 



VIII. 

MAKING A HOME. 

" Through wisdom is an house builded ; and by understanding 
it is established." — Prov. xxiv. 3. 

THE idea of the family is one of the ideas that 
are as widespread as is the human race. In- 
stinct reproduces something like it even among birds 
and animals, but the home is altogether a human 
idea and confined to man in his civilized state. 
There are families in Asia and in Africa, and perhaps 
in Europe and in America, whose dwelling-places are 
no more real homes than are the lairs in which wild 
beasts live. There are sociologists who believe that 
the home is found only in civilization, and in civili- 
zation north of a certain latitude. They make it 
coterminous with the frost-line : " Where ice never 
forms, homes are not made." Where the climate is 
so mild all the year round that every one lives out 
of doors, coming into the house only to sleep, the 
idea of the home is a dormitory. In the north, 
where the nights are long and the winters severe, 
the family is driven in upon itself, and the home 
crystallizes within as silently as the ice without. 
But it does not follow that every family living 

115 



116 BEGINNING LIFE. 

under a weatherproof roof north of the frost-line is 
in a home. Strangely enough, none of the European 
peoples, from the far south to the land of almost 
perpetual snow, use the word " home " at all ; it is 
not in their languages. They get no nearer to it 
than " house." " To the house," " in the house," 
are the idioms they use for " going home " and " at 
home." In English the word is one of the most 
common and one of the most sacred ; it is next to the 
word " heaven" itself. In this land of homes Phila- 
delphia bears the proud distinction of being the "city 
of homes." One other city has more families, but 
has far fewer homes. Communists and socialists 
grind their teeth at the very mention of Philadel- 
phia ; they consider it an almost barren soil for their 
theories. The material out of which a destructive and 
murderous mob maybe formed does not come from 
the home. But cities, like men, often end by fail- 
ing at their supposed strongest point. That — at 
least, they think — can take care of itself. It is left 
unguarded, and there the enemy enters. As soon 
as the making of homes and the fostering of home- 
life come to be questions in which it is supposed that 
Philadelphians need take no interest, our glory will 
at once begin to grow dim. Your parents had to 
answer for themselves questions concerning home- 
making, and you cannot adopt their decision : you 
must make a home for yourself. 

"Wisdom," Solomon says, "builds the house," 
the term in which he would probably include the 



MAKING A HOME. 117 

home-idea as well as that of the family-name, " and 
understanding solidifies it." Our American Solomons 
for the most part believe that the sentence should be 
amended to read, " By money is a house builded, and 
by money is it established." That money can build 
timbers and bricks and mortar and stone into 
something that answers to the term " house " is un- 
debatable. There are almost as many architects as 
lawyers on Chestnut and Walnut streets, and they 
will promise for a certain sum to draw a plan and 
make all contracts with the builders, and have you 
a house put up and furnished, to the very dishes on 
the table if you wish, within a limited time. By 
adding half as much again time and money to their 
estimates you may be reasonably confident that the 
promise will be fulfilled. Money will build you a 
house, it will give you an " establishment," but it 
cannot assure you a home. The French call these 
massive structures that money builds " hotels." 
Perhaps it would not be unfair to press a partial 
confession out of the word that the life within those 
walls is not unlike that of a hotel. The inmates 
may have as few common interests as have the so- 
called " guests " of one of our great caravansaries. 
But by diminishing the size you do not necessarily 
increase the home-feeling. There may be second- 
and third-class, as well as first-class, hotels. Wher- 
ever money is the only reliance, there can be noth- 
ing but a hotel or a boarding-house. To have a 
home there must be unity of feeling, community 



118 BEGINNING LIFE. 

of interests, and money is notoriously unable to pro- 
duce either. 

If we cannot amend this sentence of Solomon's 
by replacing the word " wisdom " by " money," 
might we not, a large number of young people are 
always asking, replace it by "love"? They go 
forth hand in hand, these trusting couples, relying 
on love to lead them to some vine-clad cottage in 
which they can build a home. Alas that Love, 
proverbially blind, should lead so many to the poor- 
house or the divorce courts ! Love was never yet 
caught handling brooms and dustcloths and frying- 
pans, or filling the larder with things to eat and the 
closets with things to wear. While neither cleanli- 
ness nor plenty makes a home, it is next to impos- 
sible to make a home without both. Love must 
have at least one part wisdom added to it before it 
can be effective as a home-maker, and then it be- 
comes so permeated all through with wisdom that 
it is almost certain to succeed. 

Love of that sort has no false pride : it is willing 
to begin at the bottom. It doesn't care how high 
society may lift its supercilious eyebrows : it is ready 
for any honest toil that may offer. It is not fright- 
ened at burdens that might appal one brave heart, 
for in this house there are two brave hearts that 
can smile at a little load like that. " Those were 
our happiest days," say some of those home-builders 
now grown old and rich, " when we began the mak- 
ing of our home. When there was plenty of hard 



MAKING A HOME. 119 

work, with usually enough to eat, what mattered it if 
now and then we sat down to rather a meagre or an 
ill-cooked meal?" Wisdom had come a little short 
in providing and preparing, but it had done its best; 
and love could afford to overlook any deficiency. 

In such a home, where there are wise as well as 
tender eyes in each head, the importance of other 
things besides the table will be recognized. There 
is an indescribable atmosphere that is quite as essen- 
tial to the home as good bread and enough of it. 
What some of the qualities are that tend to create 
this atmosphere, and without which it cannot exist, 
is an open secret. Courtesy is one of these. Those 
who have entered into an engagement to make a 
home together, or who have just begun the work, 
are ordinarily so courteous to each other as at once 
to betray themselves. This ought to bring a blush, 
not to the faces of these young innocents, but to 
the colorless, wrinkled cheeks of those who smile. 
It is the most terrible confession of their own defi- 
ciency in that quality of which neither the betrothed 
nor the newly-wedded ever has too much. These 
old cynics were once themselves as courteous as the 
young bride and groom that have aroused their merri- 
ment, but their courtesy waned with the moon, to wax, 
alas ! no more. The ears that were accustomed to the 
gentle speech of the bygone halcyon days would not 
recognize the harsh voice of the present had they not 
gradually become accustomed to its increasing grnff- 
ness of tone. Where is the table across which those 



120 BEGINNING LIFE. 

who have celebrated their silver, or even their crys- 
tal or tin, wedding always speak as they ought? 
" They are more natural now/' do you say ? Then 
to be more natural for most people means to be more 
brutal. The fine atmosphere of the home cannot 
be produced by words, however tender, but it can 
easily be destroyed by rude, uncourteous speech. 

Thoughtfulness is another quality as essential 
as oxygen to the atmosphere of the home. The 
occupants of a house or a hotel may be courteously 
indifferent to one another, but in the home this is im- 
possible ; such indifference immediately turns what 
was a home into a house or hotel. The home is the 
only double-headed entity of which we have any 
knowledge that is not a monster, but there is no mon- 
ster comparable to a home in which these two heads 
are not sympathetic. The duties of the husband and 
those of the wife are so different that it will require 
some effort on the part of both to give to each their 
proper emphasis and importance. It is easy for 
each to accuse the other of exaggeration, absolute 
or relative. The wife thinks the husband over- 
particular about his shop or office or store, and he 
thinks she underestimates somewhat the obliga- 
tions of his business or professional life and over- 
estimates the home-claims that bear most directly 
upon her. Both are very likely right, and both are 
very likely wrong. There is a mutual failure in 
thoughtfulness. In love they prefer each other to 
all the world, but "in honor preferring one another" 



MAKING A HOME. 121 

has quite slipped out of their minds. So with their 
varied tastes as well as their duties. No two people 
ever did have exactly the same likes and dislikes, 
though for a time they may honestly have tried to 
make themselves and each other think they had. 
Gradually in every instance where it was not sud- 
denly these differences make themselves felt. The 
husband and the wife find that aesthetically and 
intellectually and gastronomically they are not 
one, but two. If each is self-assertive and confi- 
dent that the other ought to yield and replace 
present tastes with the superior appetencies of 
the other, the fine atmosphere of that home is 
in danger of losing an essential quality. A little 
thoughtfulness on the part of each would make 
it self-evident to both that these differences must 
exist, that they are essential if the husband and 
the wife are to be the complement of each other, 
and that the life of each will not lose in any 
degree, but will gain markedly, by a thoughtful 
consideration of these differences. 

They have different weaknesses, too, as well as 
tastes. One is strong just where the other is not, 
and it seems rather aggravating to both that it 
should be so. Mistakes that we do not make our- 
selves appear to us unnecessary and inexcusable. 
The man forgets that his wife is a woman, and she 
reciprocates by forgetting that he is a man. He 
comes home at night from the experiences of a 
most trying day. Everything has gone wrong. 



122 BEGINNING LIFE. 

He couldn't do his own work half as well as usual, 
and his employes were still more stupid. Some in- 
vestments turned out badly, or a bill owing him 
that was marked good proved to be very far from 
it. His home seems specially attractive in antici- 
pation. He feels the need of it. He opens the 
door, and the frown on his manly brow deepens. 
His reception is not what he was counting on. No 
one meets him. There is no indication that he was 
expected and that his coming was looked forward 
to with pleasure. His wife is out, or she is taking 
care of one of the children or seeing to some domes- 
tic duty. When she appears, she seems preoccupied, 
and looks as if she expected to receive sympathy 
instead of giving it. She too has had a hard day. 
The children have been fretful, the servants, if there 
are any, have been unreasonable, and even the culi- 
nary implements have shared the general perverse- 
ness of things. She has been looking forward to 
her husband's return, to the comfort of his pres- 
ence and the encouragement of his words, but after 
a single look into his face she too is disappointed. 
Could they for a little moment exchange eyes, each 
would get what each craved, each would see that 
the strength of the other had been somewhat over- 
taxed, and due allowance would be made ; but, for 
lack of this thoughtfulness, the fine atmosphere of 
the home is likely to be seriously disturbed, and 
possibly another proof given the cynical crowd of 
onlookers that they are right about it, of course, 



MAKING A HOME. 123 

and " marriage is indisputably a failure." It always 
is when the purpose of it is not the making of a 
home, but the gratification of a momentary prefer- 
ence exalted by a noble name to which it has no 
right, or when it is chosen as the surest and easiest 
way of drawing the envious congratulations of one's 
friends, or as an escape from ennui, or as the last 
reformatory hope of the worn-out epicurean. Mar- 
riage in each of these instances is a predestined fail- 
ure ; but even when the marriage is one of those 
that appear to have been made in heaven, it will 
have come short of the perfect ideals that exist in 
the place where it was made, and even of the some- 
what imperfect ideals of the contracting parties. 
Such a wife and mother as Monica was has pointed 
out her own failures, which she thought were many. 
The most perfect home that has ever been formed 
since Adam and Eve made their great mistake in 
Paradise has lacked something ; but to write the 
word u failure" over the institution itself on this 
account would be to condemn as absolutely worth- 
less everything there is this side of heaven. 

Every true home must be founded on unselfish- 
ness. It does not exist for the husband : that 
would be the tyranny of strength ; or for the wife : 
that might be the tyranny of sweetness ; or for the 
children : that would be the tyranny of weakness and 
ignorance ; but it exists for all the members of it. 
" Bear ye one another's burdens " would be pecu- 
liarly appropriate as a home motto, though it has 



124 BEGINNING LIFE. 

failed, apparently, to achieve popularity of that 
sort- 
Such a home, while the most desirable environ- 
ment for a man or a woman, rises to the point of a 
necessity for the child. As a place for bringing up 
children the home has stood, since Plato's unsuccess- 
ful experiment, without a rival. " What France 
needs," said Napoleon as his keen eyes detected the 
moral and physical degeneration of the people of 
which he had made himself emperor — " What 
France needs is mothers." That was only half the 
truth, as he knew very well. He wanted the 
fathers to fight his battles and to win new crowns 
for the collection he was making, or he would have 
said, " What France needs is homes." There is 
little hope for France, or for any other country that 
has that crying need, until it is met in some good 
degree. American fathers are not prevented by 
force, as the French were under Napoleon, from 
doing their best to satisfy that need here, but there 
are forces almost as potent as the despotic will of 
Napoleon that hinder and destroy whatever wish 
of that sort many men may have. Business and 
politics are as exacting masters as w T as the ambitious 
Corsican. They draft men into their exclusive 
service from extreme youth to extreme old age. 
They monoplize not only their time, but their 
thoughts and interests, in a way that Napoleon 
might have envied. If a man is altogether engross- 
ed with public duties, however honorable in them- 



MAKING A HOME. 125 

selves, let him not attempt to build a home : his 
failure is foredoomed. And let not the man who 
has begun to build a home think that any other 
duty, of any sort whatever, can be of greater im- 
portance. The men who are compelled to work 
from early morning till late at night are fortunately 
very few indeed in this favored country, but the 
men who use the entire day, evenings included, to 
further mercantile or professional or political ambi- 
tions, alas for their homes ! are very numerous. 
The masculine element is just as essential as the 
feminine in the household. The fatherhood is as 
important as the motherhood in the home. We 
may be r^ady to question this because so many 
homes still exist and thrive in a way in which the 
element of fatherhood is altogether lacking. But if 
the father had fulfilled his duty, not as well as the 
average father does, but as well as the average 
father might, who can tell but that that home might 
have risen as high if the wing of motherhood 
instead of fatherhood had been broken? As one 
of the two, as chief of the two contractors, who 
have engaged to build a home under your roof, you 
have no right to give the evenings that should be 
used in that work to your ledger or your news- 
paper or your club or your lodge. It will be better 
for you to be able to say at last u Here am I, Lord, 
and the children that thou hast given me," than to be 
able to say, " Here am I, Lord, with a great fortune 
that I have gathered, or a great name that I have 



126 BEGINNING LIFE. 

achieved ; but, as for my children, their mother will 
report for them." 

For we cannot succeed in separating the two 
worlds altogether from each other. You may feel 
sometimes as if there was nothing in your business 
that could be of any interest to the angels of heaven, 
but in your home, with your children in your arms, 
you can easily understand Christ's love for the little 
ones ; and those texts about " their angels always 
beholding the face of their Father who is in heaven " 
speak to your heart even though the impression they 
leave upon the brain is not altogether distinct. How 
can you help thanking God for your children? 
How can you turn your back in the morning upon 
your home without asking him to protect them? 
You have to be early at the store or office ? Yes, 
but you can always be there a few minutes earlier if 
it is important enough ; then you can take that time 
for your home. You -can use it in reading a few 
verses from the Bible or in offering a few words of 
prayer. You haven't the courage to do it ? Think 
what a confession you are making ! You wouldn't 
like to have any one else charge you with such 
cowardice. Of all places on the earth, your home 
should be the one where you should be freest to ex- 
press your truest self, however bunglingly at first, 
where there is no dread of misapprehension and ridi- 
cule. He must be a very small man indeed who in 
such surroundings dare not hear his own voice re- 
peating the Lord's Prayer or offering some simple 



MAKING A HOME. 127 

sentences of praise or petition. You need the grace 
that will be given you at such a time as much as 
your wife needs to know that hers are not the only 
prayers that rise for your home, and as much as your 
children need to see the man they think the wisest 
and best and strongest in the world on his knees 
before his God. They may have the very best in- 
struction in the Sunday-school and from the pulpit 
in after-years, but nothing will ever impress them 
like those earliest memories of the family altar where 
you, the father, used to pray. Love, courtesy, 
thoughtfulness, unselfishness, cannot build a home 
without prayer. " Except the Lord build the house 
they labor in vain that build it." 

Home and heaven ! Christ has joined them so 
closely together that it is hard for us to disassociate 
them in our thoughts. There is no spot upon earth 
in which there is so much of heaven as in a true 
home. Heaven does indeed lie about the infancy 
of every child born into such surroundings, and the 
home seems like a perpetual pledge of heaven. " In 
my Father's house are many homes. I go to pre- 
pare one for you." For a few years only, at the 
longest, can the homes we are building here endure. 
When some morrow T 's sun shall rise, its light will 
fall upon closed shutters, and in the darkness of 
that house only the ruins of a home will remain ; 
but the love and thoughtfulness and unselfishness 
and faith that once made a home there are not dead. 
They are potent still ; and when a few more suns 



128 BEGINNING LIFE. 

shall have risen and set, the home that has disap- 
peared altogether from earth will have been rebuilt 
for ever in heaven. " Oh, happy home ! Oh, hap- 
py children there !" 



IX. 
STRENGTH. 



IX. 

STRENGTH. 

" Finally my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the 
power of his might." — Eph. vi. 10. 

WE are born with an admiration for physical 
strength. It is unconscious and instinctive. 
When the infant prefers the father's arms to the 
mother's, if it ever does, its cry is an expression of 
the high value it places upon a firm grasp and a 
steady step. The pictures the boy cuts from illus- 
trated newspapers and hangs on the walls of his 
room are those of athletes. So are the portraits, for 
the most part, that hang in the world's gallery of 
heroes. There stands old Hercules leaning on his 
club, with the Nemean lion at his feet. There is 
great Theseus grappling with the centaur and about 
to give the hitherto invincible monster his quietus. 
There is Samson scattering the Philistines right 
and left with the ridiculous jaw-bone of an ass that 
becomes terrible in those awful hands. There is 
David whirling his sling and sending the smooth 
stone into the white spot between the shaggy brows 
of the giant, and cutting oif that bison-like head 
with a colossal sword. There to this day on the 

131 



132 BEGINNING LIFE. 

walls and the propylaea of Egyptian temples is the 
conqueror Rameses holding his captives by the hair 
of their heads, while he towers, by the flattering 
strokes of the sculptor's chisel, many feet above 
them. 

The world will never outgrow its admiration for 
strong muscles and sinews. The Olympian games 
are no more, but the popular idol still is the stroke- 
oar of the successful crew, the pitcher of the cham- 
pion baseball nine, the bowler of the eleven that 
holds the cup, the rusher of the football team that 
wins the ball. The Christianity that equips its 
young men's associations with model gymnasia and 
athletic grounds certainly has no word of contempt 
for physical development. It may, and does, have 
something to say about moderation in these things, 
and concerning a tendency, particularly marked in 
our colleges, to over-estimate the value of brawn as 
compared with brain. It is not the best scholar, but 
the best athlete, in his class who is the most envied 
man of the college. Christianity, common sense and 
history all make their protest against this as a false 
appraisement, an untrue perspective — as the judg- 
ment of an untrained eye. 

The very people that once took the most intense 
pleasure in physical triumphs began, after a time, 
to see that this was not the line for man to put 
himself upon. The brutes were all superior to him 
here, and in any fair test of strength or speed or en- 
durance man must always come out decidedly second- 



STRENGTH. 133 

best. The clearest-eyed of the Greeks saw the mis- 
take, and did what they could to lift man to a higher 
level, the intellectual, where they felt he belonged, 
and where the brutes could no longer be his com- 
petitors. They succeeded so well that the honors 
once given to the runner and the thrower and the 
fighter were very largely transferred to the poet and 
the orator and the philosopher. The man who could 
recount in prose or verse the deeds of warriors was 
sure of a glory that might rival, if not outshine, that 
of the warriors themselves. Intellectual develop- 
ment was sought as eagerly as physical had been. 
With the exception of college-students, all men 
to-day who have sufficient education to give their 
opinions any value rank intellectual strength above 
physical. They agree with Bacon " that knowledge 
is power." They would not for a moment think of 
comparing the strength of a Samson or a Hercules 
with that of a Homer or a Humboldt. One, they 
see, is altogether animal, perishing as utterly after 
a few years as that of a lion or an elephant, while 
the other is altogether human and will endure as 
long as human languages are able to hold human 
thoughts in solution. 

So far we may go with the majority ; but if we 
attempt to rise to a still higher level, we must ex- 
pect to find the number with us diminishing. Still, 
there is a very respectable minority who rank 
strength of will and purpose above both intellectual 
and physical strength. Not a Hercules nor a Homer 



134 BEGINNING LIFE. 

is eo strong a man, in their eyes, as a Moses or a 
"Washington, enduring reproach or misapprehen- 
sion without swerving for a single step from the 
course they had marked out as right. There are 
political exiles in Siberia, it is said, some of them 
women of high rank and fine culture, accustomed to 
the delicate life of the Russian capitals, who have 
passed long years of unspeakable torture in circum- 
stances that seem to us, as we read, absolutely un- 
unbearable even for men of the coarsest fibre, who 
say little in the way of vituperation, but who 
calmly announce their unalterable conviction that 
while " they may die in exile, and their children 
may die in exile, and their children's children may 
die in exile, at last something will come out of it." 
Such an exhibition of strength as that thrills every 
heart that is in the right place as no possible 
physical or intellectual triumphs could ever do. 
This strength of will is so closely allied to moral 
strength, if they are not one and the same thing 
from different sides, that it is often exceedingly dif- 
ficult to distinguish between them. These exiles in 
Siberia cannot be merely self-willed or obstinate : 
they must have a firm conviction that they are doing 
right and to do differently would be a violation of 
conscience. It needs only to widen the horizon which 
we presume them to have to include every violation 
of conscience to give us a glimpse of one of the 
least common but most exalted types of strength. 
Shakespeare assumes that strength of this sort is by 



STRENGTH. 135 

no means always associated with great physical 
power when he says, 

" Oh, it is excellent 
To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous 
To use it like a giant." 

Physical prowess, uncontrolled by justice, right con- 
science, is utterly denuded of all its beauty in Shake- 
speare's eyes, and should be in ours. Why should 
we even account it entitled to the name ? Is it not 
an absurdity to speak of a man as being strong who 
can be turned this way or that by any wind that 
blows upon him ? Is he strong who has no self- 
control, who is run away with by temper or by 
appetite or by desire, who yields with but the show 
of a struggle to his lust for gold or pleasure or place ? 
Is he a strong man who has not strength enough to 
do what he believes to be the right thing, though 
his friend or his party assure him that it will be 
dangerous to his interests and theirs? Is he a 
strong man who trembles at the crack of some 
boss's whip, or who dare not speak because the 
command, " Keep still !" has been passed along the 
ranks ? The strong man must be free, free to do as 
his conscience commands him. Mrs. Boswell, who 
had no liking for her husband's gruff and burly 
friend Dr. Johnson, and who thought the philoso- 
pher had far too much influence over Mr. Boswell, 
once said " she had very often seen a bear led about 
by a man, but never before had she seen a man led 



136 BEGINNING LIFE. 

about by a bear ;" but every man is who lets the 
brutal part of himself or of other men dictate to 
him, every man is who allows any sensuous indul- 
gence to lead him where his conscience tells him he 
ought not go. A man led about by a bear is not 
our idea of a strong man. Manhood, the world is 
slowly coming to see, lies not in physical or intel- 
lectual qualities, but in moral dispositions. Both a 
giant and a philosopher may be brutes, but he who 
is strong in truth, in honor, in purity, in self-cul- 
ture, in the right, in the Lord, is a strong man. 

Like the lower forms, such strength is acquired, 
and by the same methods. Whoever wishes to 
be an athlete or a scholar must consent to deny 
himself some very pleasant things. You must go 
into training to be an athlete, you must go to 
school to be a scholar ; and in each instance self-in- 
dulgence is forbidden. There must be no dainty 
dishes, no stimulating beverages or narcotics for the 
athlete ; no midnight amusements, no morning 
hours wasted in sleep, for the scholar. Just so far 
as each is in earnest there is a positive delight in 
any self-denial that offers an increased probability 
of success. Let the athlete or scholar be worthy 
of the name, and he stops at nothing that will ap- 
parently bring him a little nearer what he wishes 
to be. He sees no attractiveness in anything that 
would weaken him and his chances of success. 
Nothing more than this is asked of those who wish 
for character, moral strength. Self-denial stares 



STRENGTH. 137 

them in the face the moment they begin their quest, 
but it is the denial of that self which can be 
strengthened only at the expense of the very self 
they are anxious to develop. Like the athlete and 
the scholar, the man must avoid every indulgence, 
every amusement even, that saps and undermines 
those fine virtues that must all be preserved and 
developed if he is ever to fill his own idea of the 
strong man. To be anything you must deny some 
part of yourself. To be a man you have only to 
deny that part of yourself which is unworthy of 
you. There is no more self-denial for those who 
are seeking to be strong in the Lord than there is 
for those who are seeking any other kind of strength ; 
only it is a different kind of self-denial. 

But no man ever gets strength of any sort what- 
ever by simply not doing some things. What he 
gives up is the mere clearing the ground of weeds, 
so that the crop he wishes to raise can have a fair 
chance. There are negative Christians, or imita- 
tions called such, whose only claim to be strong is 
that they have given up everything that makes men 
weak. They permit themselves no self-indulgences, 
no pernicious amusements ; they do nothing that 
could sap their strength. But what are they doing 
to increase it? Where is the athlete or scholar that 
wins prizes simply by not doing injurious things? 
Muscle and brain must be fed and exercised if they 
are ever to be strong ; so must the soul. Some men 
are by nature morally as well as physically and in- 



138 BEGINNING LIFE, 

tellectually stronger than others, but no man ever 
yet had a strong character that was not made strong 
by his own efforts. He nourished and exercised him- 
self with that end in view. When he found that the 
moral giants had all fed their souls on the moral 
truths of the Bible, he considered this good evidence 
that there must be something in this book especially 
adapted for strengthening the conscience and the soul 
of man. Must a young man or a young woman read 
the Bible ? Not necessarily merely to be what many 
young men and young women are; but for those 
who wish to be morally and spiritually strong this 
is the one indispensable book. Even men like Mr. 
Huxley, who are not willing to concede its divine 
character, yet place the Bible above all other books 
as a moral force. They do not see, they confess, 
how, without the use of it, ideals so lofty and in- 
spirations so potent can ever be produced. When 
you are told to read the Bible, you need not think 
of yourself as going around with a flexible-covered 
copy of the sacred volume under your arm, ques- 
tioning all your friends as to the meaning of various 
passages in the minor prophets and in Revelation. 
I have nothing to say against carrying a Bible 
under your arm, but the place where it will do you 
the most good to carry it is where Coligny and 
Cromwell and Havelock and Livingstone carried 
theirs : in the heart. 

But the Bible itself urges those who feel their 
need of wisdom and strength to ask for what they 



STRENGTH. 139 

want of Him who moved holy men of old to write 
these words. It is a book that draws attention to 
itself only that it may fix the attention thus secured 
upon an ever-living Being. Must a young person 
pray? There is something natural about reading 
anything, even the Bible ; but this bowing like a 
carved figure in an unaccustomed attitude, and mut- 
tering words in the air — what relation can there be 
between such an exercise and the practical questions 
that are impatiently waiting the conclusion of these 
orisons ? This wise book constantly associates wor- 
ship and conduct. " They that wait upon the Lord 
shall renew their strength." Strong men like Co- 
ligny and Cromwell and Havelock and Livingstone 
believed that they could not fight their battles suc- 
cessfully without prayer. They did not lay great 
stress upon a particular attitude, or upon any set 
forms, or upon words at all. Prayer, to them, was 
not a mere religious ceremony working as incanta- 
tions are supposed to work : it was direct commu- 
nication with the one Being in this universe whose 
power is always making for righteousness, and who 
is always eager to help those who feel themselves 
sinking. So to think of prayer is to change the ! 
obligation into a privilege, and on the use we make 
of it will depend, to an extent which probably very 
few of us realize, our efficiency as moral forces. 

From some points of view this seems to be rather 
an unfortunate time to begin life. All the profes- 
sions and all forms of business, they tell us, are 



140 BEGINNING LIFE. 

overcrowded. The supply everywhere seems greater 
than the demand, and many of you, perhaps, have 
already had the sense of being superfluous. But 
the world is by no means overstocked with young 
men and women who are strong in moral purpose, 
strong in character, strong in the Lord. There is 
no profession or business that will not hasten to 
make room for any number of such young persons 
as soon as their presence is known. All the large 
firms of our own and of every other city have 
unsatisfactory employes whom they would be glad 
to weed out if they could be certain of filling the 
vacancies with trustworthy persons. All the pro- 
fessions have a number of places reserved and kept 
unoccupied, waiting, not for candidates — there are 
scores of applicants for each — but waiting till the 
right man appears, and then immediately the call 
for his services will be ready. The political 
world, swarming as it is with a hungry hoard, is 
in greatest need of strong young men, young men 
whose back-bones are not to be bent though a whole 
party try its hand at it ; young men whose knees 
will not bow to the tyrant's cap though obloquy and 
obscurity are threatened ; young men who will dare, 
as young men did fifty years ago, to lift their voices 
and cry out against iniquity, though entrenched be- 
hind majorities, respectability and religion. For 
such young men there is plenty of room in the polit- 
ical world, and wherever they are will be the top. 
Society, too, has places for more than four huudred 



STRENGTH. 141 

young persons of this sort. They may not be wel- 
comed with any great enthusiasm by those who are 
already in ; they will be looked upon, possibly, as 
interloping puritans ; but the sincerity of grateful 
recognition on the part of the few will more than 
compensate for the indifference or the recoil of the 
many. In every social stratum there are some who 
set themselves determinedly against excesses, against 
degrading self-indulgence, against frivolity and ma- 
terialism. They are lonely ; they feel themselves in 
a hopeless minority. If you can bring them a rein- 
forcement of moral strength, you will be as welcome 
as Blticher was to Wellington, as La Fayette was to 
Washington. If you have nothing of this kind 
to bring, if you are a vacillating person with no 
strong moral purpose, if everything that is pleas- 
ant seems to you desirable without any question 
of right, then society of any sort will be fatal to 
you, and you will do what you can to be fatal to it. 
What the business and professional and polit- 
ical and social worlds want is, as Canon Farrar 
says, "not echoes, but voices." It may not be 
yours to choose to be a voice that shall startle any 
of these worlds and force them to give heed to you 
as to a modern prophet, but it is yours to choose 
whether you will supinely echo the belittling senti- 
ments that fill the air, or whether you will lift your 
voice and strike with some truth that is in your 
heart straight through the soft, enervating harmo- 
nies that lull the senses into ignoble slumber. You 



142 BEGINNING LIFE. 

are not strong enough, no young man or woman is, 
to be such a voice till you have gained strength of 
character and moral purpose from the Lord. 

When Paul recounted all the parts of the com- 
plex armor that he thought necessary for those who 
have the high purpose of resisting all the powers that 
make for unrighteousness, he had no desire to fright- 
en them or us into unnecessary caution or excessive 
equipment. We are all tempted at times to do this, 
and we do not always successfully resist the temp- 
tation. We half-unconsciously exaggerate dangers 
to heighten the value of our suggestions as to the 
way of avoiding them. Paul has not yielded to 
any such temptation here if he ever felt it. He 
has given us a highly figurative, but not over- 
wrought, description of what we have to contend 
with, and of the need there is, therefore, to be fore- 
armed. His soldier, when he has him entirely 
accoutred with his girdle and breastplate and san- 
dals and shield and helmet and sword, impresses us 
as somewhat overweighted, and as liable to be hin- 
dered, if not crushed, by his weapons, offensive and 
defensive ; but try this armament for the next few 
days and see if you cannot carry it easily. A 
girdle of truth, a breastplate of righteousness, a 
shield of faith, a helmet of salvation and a sword 
of the Spirit can all be used without impediment 
and without ostentation. Any lighter equipment 
than that in the conflict in which we must take part 
will prove wholly inadequate. 



STRENGTH. 143 

Be strong, not as the brutes, not as the unthinking 
machine, but as men. Be strong to resist wrong and 
to beat it down. To this Christ calls you. It is a 
call to warfare, yet to peace. " Nothing can bring 
you peace," Emerson says, "but the triumph of 
principles f and it is to that triumph Christ is 
pledged to lead those who follow him. It is a call 
to run a hard race on a pathway beset by dangers, 
but arched with flowers and palms of victory. Run- 
ning swiftly and courageously, many a sweet blossom 
and green palm will be shaken down to gladden us by 
the way, and the pulse will be quickened, aud hope 
will be high, and the joy and safety of strength will 
be to us delightful antepasts of the unspeakable 
awards that await the victors when at last the goal 
shall be reached. 



X. 

SUCCESS. 



10 



X. 

SUCCESS. 

" His Lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful 
servant." — Matt. xxv. 21. 

THERE was room enough in the Roman Pantheon 
for any god who had worshipers sufficiently 
enthusiastic to claim a place for him there, and there 
is room enough in the world's temple of success for 
a pillar or a tablet to any claimant who can mnster 
a sufficiently enthusiastic crowd of admirers. No 
questions are asked as to the cause of that enthusi- 
asm : it may have been excited by rare ability in 
numbering stars or in counting votes, in helping 
one's fellow-men or one's party and one's self. Here 
in this modern pantheon are altars equally magnifi- 
cent to men who have given away large fortunes 
honestly made, and to men who have dishonestly 
appropriated fortunes quite as large for their own 
use. There stands a pillar to keep alive the memory 
of a martyr whose death meant life for a whole 
community, and by its side is a pillar of the same 
sort to a manipulator whose life meant death to 
banks and railroads, and to every financial enter- 
prise upon which he could lay his wrecking hand. 

147 



148 BEGINNING LIFE. 

That there should be some confusion in the 
minds of those who stroll through this temple is 
inevitable. The natural inference for any one 
would be that success and notoriety are synonymous, 
and that to become notorious, in whatever way, is the 
thiug to be sought. This is not only the natural, 
but the ordinary and actual, inference of those who 
are forming their ideas of success from what they 
see in this temple. We must do something, they 
are saying to themselves, to push our w T ay through 
the crowd and force attention : it makes very little 
difference what. If you can write a book or paint 
a picture or discover a new force or some unsuspect- 
ed utility in an old one, if you can pierce an un- 
known continent or the ice of the polar sea or so 
play upon the curiosity and credulity of men as to 
fix their expectations and their hopes upon yourself, 
you have solved the problem, and may take your 
place among the select company of successful men. 

" All the proud virtue of this vaunting world 
Fawns on success, howe'er acquired." 

There is something quite clear and understand- 
able about success so defined and achieved. The 
prize to be sought is plainly in sight, and so is the 
road that leads to it. So long as we can forget the 
heights that are above us and the depths that are 
within us it is possible to believe that success of 
this sort will be eminently satisfactory, but the 
moment these heights and depths come into view, 



SUCCESS. 149 

doubts of a very serious sort will be begotten. 
How can we consider the problem solved when 
factors so important as these heights and depths are 
left out altogether? One glance inward upon a 
man's own soul with its throng of aspirations wholly 
untouched by notoriety is enough to make all but 
the intoxicated question the correctness of the 
world's definition of success. Was it right to sacri- 
fice a hundred yearnings, confessedly of the nobler 
sort, to a single desire acknowledgedly so common 
as easily to become vulgar ? Was it wise to barter 
truth and sincerity and purity and honor, and 
probably health and culture, for a notoriety from 
which all that is still left of manhood shrinks un- 
satisfied and disappointed away ? 

If a glance inward can beget such doubts, what 
vitality will be given them by a glance upward ! 
Those silent stars, a few nights hence it may be, 
are to look down upon our graves ; what matter 
then about pillars of marble and tablets of brass in 
the temple of Fame? Was it worth while to pay 
so dearly for a possession that could be held so 
briefly ? The element of time is a large element of 
value. No man would pay as much for an ice-pal- 
ace as for the same edifice in stone, or for a memo- 
rial arch in wood as for its facsimile in marble. 
Gold and diamonds have no value on a sinking 
ship ; any one who likes can have them for the 
few seconds before the final plunge. This notoriety 
that the world wishes to foist on us as genuine success 



150 BEGINNING LIFE. 

can last us, it is admitted, for only a little while, 
and then, as the silent stars seem to forewarn us, 
the cheers upon which we have lived will be as 
silent as are these planets that have looked down 
upon thousands of generations that have wasted 
their foolish lives for just such evanescent huzzahs. 
Their silence suggests something more than this. 
" Beyond us," they seem to say, for so men, almost 
in spite of themselves, have interpreted their 
silence, "is a spirit-world whose population is 
every moment augmented by those who once dwelt 
upon your earth." Who are they that are accounted 
successful in the abodes of eternity? We can 
answer in part the question for ourselves. Think 
this generation out of this world into that, and 
then ask yourself how many of those you have 
been accustomed to call successful men here appear 
to you now to be so there. The winners of a great 
fortune or a great name or a great position shrivel 
under that test. The distinctions upon which they 
assumed and were conceded a superiority among 
their fellow-men you feel have disappeared alto- 
gether. 

Your own heart will have prepared you to an- 
ticipate some such words from Him who is to be 
the Judge in the final apportionment of awards as 
those Christ speaks to his disciples when he describes 
the last great assize in his parable. The " Well 
done " that sounds in the ears of those who have 
been really successful is not heard at all by those 



SUCCESS. 151 

who have aimed for notoriety in whatever way, but 
by those who have aimed for fidelity. The first 
requisite for success, then, according to Christ's idea 
of it, is to give up all thought of it. As Jeremiah 
said to Baruch, " Seekest thou great things for thy- 
self? Seek them not." As Christ said to his 
disciples, " He that would be greatest among you, 
let him be your minister," let him be most efficient 
in service, let him do most in carrying his fellow- 
men to a higher plane. He substitutes, it has been 
said, " the greatness of love for the love of great- 
ness." This idea of success and that of the world 
are the complete antitheses of each other. The 
world knows nothing about any success that has not 
attained extraordinary and noteworthy results of 
some sort. If such results are forthcoming, it is 
entirely indifferent as to the means employed. 
Christ has nothing whatever to say about note- 
worthy results : his successful man is one who has 
been wholly engrossed in the commonplace occu- 
pation of doing the best he can with commissions, 
small or great, given him by his Master. In 
Christ's eyes means and motives overshadow results 
altogether. Each of those who received his " Well 
done " was one whose only purpose was to do well ; 
and that purpose, whatever comes of it, makes a 
man, according to Christ's ideas, successful. 

There can be nothing accidental or involuntary 
about success of this sort. Prominence, notoriety, 
may be matters of birth or of good-fortune. The 



152 BEGINNING LIFE. 

world's successful man may have done nothing him- 
self to win the prize ; it may have dropped into his 
hands while he was almost asleep, with only con- 
sciousness enough to close his fingers upon his luck ; 
but fidelity is never hereditary or accidental. With 
a great effort he who has it has turned away from 
all lower ambitions, and with a mighty movement 
of soul has chosen this as the supreme passion of his 
life. And as no chance can bring success of this 
sort, so no chance can prevent it. Nothing is more 
certain than that prominence and notoriety are very 
often denied to those who Avould seem to have merited 
them, else Addison would never have written, 

" It is not in mortals to command success, 
But we'll do more, Sempronius : we'll deserve it." 

Notoriety is lawless and fickle. Those who have de- 
served to win her may for some inexplicable reason 
fail altogether, while she flings herself almost un- 
sought into the arms of the unworthy. But success, 
as Christ defined it, is as intangible to chance as the 
earth's orbit. Nay, nothing in the physical world 
can be half so assured as this, for God himself must 
change before fidelity can fail of his " Well done." 
This brings success easily within reach of us all. 
Prominence and notoriety must, in the very nature 
of the case, be confined to a few. The moment you 
lift the Vale of Interlaken to the level of the Jung- 
frau your mountain has disappeared. To give prom- 
inence and notoriety to every one would be to rob 



SUCCESS. 153 

the few of it who once towered above their fellow- 
men. It is this that has awakened the murderous 
envy and hatred of men. The prizes they were 
after were not half numerous enough to go around. 
There was only one, perhaps, for ten or a hundred 
thousand competitors, and every one of these hun- 
dreds or thousands looked upon every other one in 
the same class as an enemy, and was right. Every 
eye was full of envy and every heart of hate, and 
there was no help for it. But Christ's idea of suc- 
cess changes all these conditions. To make room 
higher up some one else must be crowded out of the 
way or be gotten rid of, but there are plenty of 
places lower down, the best places for service, where 
Christ wants his disciples to go, and where just in 
proportion to their fidelity they will be found, and 
their success will be exactly commensurate with their 
faithfulness. 

There is no need for any one who is willing to 
adopt Christ's view of things to look anxiously or 
eagerly for openings that may lead to success. 
Turn which way you will, such doors stand wide 
open. Emerson thinks that the parlor and the 
college and the counting-room demand as much 
courage as the sea or the camp, if that might 
possibly be considered an open question, it cer- 
tainly is not, that the parlor and the college and 
counting-room, and the mill and the shop and the 
kitchen included, demand as much fidelity as the 
sea or the camp, and are as good fields for its exer- 



154 BEGINNING LIFE. 

cise. The field is a matter of very little if any con- 
sequence in Christ's eyes: it is the fidelity that is 
shown in it. He states in so many words that the 
final award will be accompanied by great surprises, 
that many judged by the world and the Church 
to have made prime successes will be given low 
places, if any at all, and many who were thought 
little of in the world and the Church will be ad- 
vanced to the head, for they have been most faith- 
ful, perhaps in most confined and uninspiring fields. 
Paul's anticipations of receiving a crown in that 
day were not based upon any of the results of his 
work, upon the number of churches established or 
converts made, but he was certain of the reward, 
because he had fought the good fight; and the cer- 
tainty he felt for himself he felt for every one else 
who had done the same, though what the world, 
and even these faithful ones, would call a victory 
may never have been won. 

Still, though we may accept Christ's ideas of 
success as heartily as it is possible for beings as 
short-sighted as ourselves to do, there will be a 
longing, more or less marked according to our 
temperament and the degree of our faith, for re- 
sults. Believe as we may, and as we must if we 
are Christians, that fidelity is the essence of success, 
and that results are only its accidents, we cannot 
prevent ourselves from having strong desires for 
those accidents. Very possibly we should not at- 
tempt to destroy, but only to control, such desires ; 



SUCCESS. 155 

for results will ordinarily follow fidelity, and, while 
they are not to be sought as ends in themselves, 
they are not to be undervalued when they are the 
ripened fruits of fidelity. While Christ commends 
the faithfulness of the good servants in the parable, 
and while we feel confident he would have com- 
mended any one of them as heartily who had done 
his best to invest and increase his talents, even if 
he had been unfortunate, and in putting the money 
out to the exchangers had lost it all, yet it seems 
fair to draw the inference that in real life desired 
results will in the great majority of instances follow 
fidelity, as in the parable the increase of the talents 
follows the conscientious care of them. 

That the man who is intensely anxious to be faith- 
ful rather than excitedly eager for results is in the 
best condition to command such results is almost 
self-evident. He will have the two qualities that all 
the world agrees in naming as requisite for the pro- 
duction of results in a marked degree, industry and 
tenacity of purpose. Fidelity and industry, while 
not synonymous, are indissoluble. They are like 
the two brothers bound by a vital ligament upon 
which the touch of the separating knife meant death 
to both. Men have " toiled terribly " for glory and 
wealth, and even for pleasure ; but other men have 
been as ambitious and avaricious and sensuous, yet 
never to the point of industry. Some other avenue 
has seemed to open up to what they wished, and 
they have eagerly chosen it; but the faithful man 



156 BEGINNING LIFE. 

has but one hope. For him there is no other pos- 
sible approach to the object of his desires. Great 
students of human nature have felt that they were 
safest in making their appeal to this sense of fidel- 
ity, of duty. Both Wellington and Nelson had 
little to say to their soldiers and sailors about glory 
or rich prizes or the delights of captured capitals : 
they had much to say about duty and what they 
had a right to expect from faithful servants of their 
king and country. Fidelity is the only motive to 
industry that has no let up in it. The man who 
toils terribly for glory or power or pleasure when 
he gets what he has toiled for finds the mainspring 
of his energies is broken, and he falls supinely upon 
the prize he has won ; but the man who is toiling that 
he may be faithful to the trust committed to him will 
be urged on till life itself is over and his account 
rendered. What is to prevent such industry from 
producing results often of the most brilliant sort? 
The other requisite, the world says, for marked 
efficiency in attaining the end desired is tenacity of 
purpose. But who is he that is most calmly tena- 
cious of his purpose? Is it the man who has 
vowed the great vow to himself and the silent Fates 
that he will be prominent and notorious ? Can such 
a man be calm when he thinks of the tremendous 
difficulties he must surmount and the awful uncer- 
tainties that will still hover about him even after 
these obstacles are over-passed ? Can a man's heart 
beat regularly when his fate hangs on the throwing 



SUCCESS. 157 

of a dice ? Or can such a man choose his path and 
hold to it tenaciously when short cuts are constantly 
coming in sight and a tumult of voices urges him to 
take these or direful consequences? The man has 
yet to appear with a purpose tenacious enough to re- 
sist these temptations to forsake the road originally 
chosen. From Caesar to Napoleon I. and from Na- 
poleon III. to Boulanger the short cut taken against 
the man's own better judgment has proved fatal. 
It must always be so ; whoever lives for results 
must be ready to change his route whenever some 
other seems more direct. While the end sought 
may be always the same, the man will vacillate and 
move uneasily hither and thither as he hurries im- 
patiently toward it. 

What a contrast to all this is the steady, unswerv- 
ing tread of the man who is striving for fidelity, 
without reference to results ! There can be for him 
no alluring short cuts. He may, of course, be 
tempted to unfaithfulness, but he cannot be tempted 
with the hope of ever reaching what he seeks by any 
other except the straight path. His reliance must 
always be in doing well what he has to do, while 
the reliance of the man whose eye is on results will 
be in getting something to do where noise and bluster 
can be substituted for sweat and skill. So every 
path to-day is crowded, not with men of industry 
and purpose, but with men who are hurrying from 
place to place with the hope that by some lucky 
chance they may some time find something that 



158 BEGINNING LIFE. 

will yield results without effort. Those musicians 
on our street-corners who play with the aid of a few 
well-arranged wires a half dozen instruments at a 
time, and, though they never can make any music 
on any of them, yet attract much attention, are the 
embodiment of the popular craze for doing any 
number of things, however poorly, if a momentary 
prominence may be gained by it. Such a mounte- 
bank any man, whatever his gifts, may become who 
makes the producing of results the purpose of his 
life. 

As I draw near the end of this series of discourses 
to the young I find myself eager as friends are when 
time hurries apace and they must part to speak some 
word that might linger with you, some helpful word 
that would be in itself an inspiration in the sore 
struggle of life. I can find no other with more of 
destiny in it than this we have heard Christ repeat- 
ing to us to-night: "Fidelity." Fling away all 
thought of prominence or of notoriety. " 'Tis only 
noble to be good." Be true to God, to Christ, 
whatever comes, and your fidelity will achieve all 
fitting results. " Seek ye first," he says to you, 
"the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and 
all these things shall be added unto you." What- 
ever else fails you, you shall assuredly have at last 
the evidence of your eternal success in his " Well 
done, good and faithful servant !" 

THE END. 









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